This thread will soon be closed. All the information has been moved to the Theorycraft Think Tank at Shaman: Enhancement.

Please update your links and note that the wiki is not to be used for questions/discussion. Post only corrections or change requests there. Discussion and questions ("guys should I use double syphon???") should go in a relevant thread here in the forums.

Further discussion of Enhancement topics should start in new threads (ie, a thread about gear, a thread about windfury mechanics, etc etc).

Bravo!

I think Lootzor and Pawn work the same way: you give each stat a "weight" value; large weight means the stat is more important.

I'm more comfortable working with small numbers than with the 100s, but as long a the ratios are the same, I think you're good.

For someone at the Kara/Gruul/Mag level (2200 AP, 25% Crit, 22% Hit), I believe Tornhoof and I agree that the lootzor values are:

Str = 1.1
Agi = 1.0
AP = 0.5
CR = 1.0
HR = 0.7

In fact, here's a link to that search in Lootzor: http://www.lootzor.com/index.php?c=7...u1hedu.7heeu.5

Disquette's values were a little different, mainly because used a broader range of stats and averaged across them all.

As a matter of style/utility, I'd think you'd put these at the top of your post rather than at the bottom, but that's a pretty minor comment.


I'm not sure where it is, but you might want to add a sentence or two showing why INT and MP5 are wasted on our gear--the weakness of our DPM, basically.

Very good post.

I would add the GM/HW one-handers in the list of available blue offhands. I use the axe currently because heroic bosses despise dropping weapons for me. (Got exalted with CE trying to get an offhand..)

Perhaps you were referring to having both weapons enchanted, but Enchant Weapon Potency is only +20 Strength (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=22553).
Just to add to it, the 2.6 blue OHs drop in Heroic UB from Hungarfen, Heroic Old Hillsbrad from Lieutenant Drake, and Heroic Crypts like you mentioned; the level 70 blue HWL weapons are also 71.7 DPS.

Good post.

Thank the maker!

I was getting headache's trying to de-crypt the Itemization thread

Might be worthwhile to dispel some common misconceptions and set in stone a couple things, such as:
--Windfury Weapon suffers neither from the OH 50% penalty for OH procs, nor the dual-wield 24% miss rate. This means that (assuming identical weapons), MH and OH procs are identical.
--Haste Rating is not bad for Enhance Shamans. There was some comically faulty theorycrafting on Blizzard's Shaman forums a while back claiming that Haste Rating actually lowered DPS. This is not the case. At all. Haste Rating will increase DPS substantially, as for any melee class with a high % of damage being white. However, Haste Rating suffers from diminishing returns as it increases and pushes WF procs closer together.

Some links to the only non-arena offhands until you hit Al'ar:

Bloodskull Destroyer
http://www.wowhead.com/?item=28210

Boggspine Knuckles
http://www.wowhead.com/?item=27747

and The Harvester of Souls
http://www.wowhead.com/?item=27872

Oops on the Potency value. That was me copying from someone else's post.
Updating with some of this stuff now.

Well, the Windfury bonus AP is the same for each hand yes, but the procs are most definitely not the same since the OH weapon damage is reduced by 50%. I had already included a statement about this in the original post though, its in the WF section at the top.
Haste was mentioned already as well.

Edit - Can someone provide the data on Gems (8 Str and the 4Str/4Crit ones) and the meta gems of choice?

This may sound stupid but I thought I'd ask anyway; but ever since the WF-3second-cooldown nerf, has anyone tried not applying WF to their off-hand and using the WF totem to apply the WF to the off-hand? I know its less WF dmg, but maybe it out-weighs the internal cooldown of applying an off-hand self-WF?

If you cant even do this kindly disregard my post, I havent been enhance in awhile.

Oy. I totally almost put this into the post and then I thought. "nah, I think people are done asking this".

.... and so it shall go into the post.

No, do not use WF totem instead of WF Weapon. Its not nearly the same thing.

Haha, thanks! I haven't been reading the shammy-enh posts since I went resto at 70 and then ele eventually. Very good post none-the-less.

Btw im a retard...I thought WF totem buffed both weapons...stupid question! Having said that, if it was possible to self-imbued WF and totem OH WF, maybe it would be better...but who knows.

Thanks again!

Someone please correct me if I'm wrong, but does this mean 1 CR = 2 AP = 1.43 HR?

Yeah, that's right. "Equivalences" are just inverted "weights." For equivalencies, you're just saying "I would be equally happy getting 1 CR or 1.43 HR." For weights, you're saying "HR is 0.7 times as good as [1.0] CR."

I really like the "weight" system myself, because it allows for quick input into lootzor, and it also conforms to the AEP paradigm. You can think of those weights as AEP for us (since Agi is 1.0 as well) or CritEP if you prefer. (Technically, AGI is 0.97 = 22.1*1.1/25, but I think 1.0 is close enough for simplicity's sake.) I believe pawn uses the same approach, to give each item a "value" in the tooltip.

I've got exported pawn strings for Pater and Disquette's values:

( Pawn: v1: "AEP (Disq)": RedSocket=17.6, CritRating=1.51, Strength=2.2, MetaSocket=24, Agility=1.47, HitRating=1.08, BlueSocket=17.6, YellowSocket=17.6, Ap=1 )

( Pawn: v1: "AEP (Pater)": RedSocket=17.6, CritRating=2, Strength=2.2, MetaSocket=24, Agility=2, HitRating=1.4, BlueSocket=17.6, YellowSocket=17.6, Ap=1 )

So you can use the /pawn import command and paste those in. I scaled both to use a baseline of 1AP, and assumed 8str gems in sockets, and 24AP gem in metasocket.

That's pretty cool.

I have also added a link to Lootzor's top 10 results for every slot in my sig.

Yeah I wanted to make sure, because it seems some of Lootzor's items are out of date with the 2.1 changes and I was working on a list for myself. Now we need to figure out weighting and value for haste rating.

I can (or a helpful helper can) put haste rating into my sim pretty easily. I don't have any procs yet, but I should make the top ones (mongoose and that haste hammer at least) a priority.

Totem of the Astral Winds isn't exactly farmable, you can't reset heroic instances. It does take 15 minutes from zone in to the first boss though, should be worth doing it anytime you're doing any other Heroic in Auchindoun.

We should also include int/mp5 in our weightings (perhaps in two minute chunks). Although alot of leather is quite rated quite highly in the lootzor link, I think my back of the envelope calculations showed that we shouldn't neglect Int/mp5 completely: http://elitistjerks.com/showpost.php...postcount=1026 http://elitistjerks.com/showpost.php...postcount=1039

It may be that, at higher levels of gear, the percentage of damage that consists of Shocks will be so low that it's more worthwhile to just gear without thought to mana and reduce the number of shocks. But, at my level, with 0 spell damage, shocks are still a significant portion of my damage (~156 dps with debuffs). Since I am at the point where it is possible to run OOM during a full burn cycle, there must exist some equivalence between extra mana vs extra melee stats.

AP and +hit has the advantage of doing double duty of increasing melee damage while boosting mana gains, but relying on SR completely is also not always optimal. Timing SR with a trinket maximises mana gain, but you have to time it when you can be certain you won't waste SR procs. However, in many encounters, there exist damage windows where it's optimal to save your trinket for. These two scenarios don't always occur at the same time.

With a full burn DPS cycle being estimated at least ~13k mana per two minutes, we need to consider the question: What is the optimal ratio of intellect and mp5 to melee stats?

This will be a multivariable function which several critical points exist. Some things to consider:
-Does there exist any itemization points where the additional melee damage outweighs being able to shock every cooldown?
-If there is not, what is the minimum mana pool, mp5 and mana from SR required to sustain a full burn cycle.

Panny: I guess your mileage may vary. Some shaman have mana issues, others never do. It all depends on your gear, your raid composition, and the encounter.

It's impossible to have a realistic "dps weight" for mp5, int or stamina, because there is no direct connection between them and the other dps stats. At best, you should establish the amount of mana used in a 2 minute burn cycle, and develop a formula to express how much minimum mana a shaman would need, based on his AP (since AP directly feeds your mana regen with SR). mp5 is going to always, always, always be an inferior stat to Int for a decently geared shaman, since that shaman will be regenerating more mana with SR than he has room for in his small mana pool, and Int is a much cheaper itemization stat.

Furthermore, a 'full burn cycle' of mana consumption is nearly always constant, so there's not a lot of variables involved. Just determine the formula needed for complete sustainability based on buffed AP and weapon speed.

Personally, I raid with a Ret pally. <3 JoW

Curious, i wonder how big the difference is between the WF weapon enchant, and the WF totem (both talented).

The biggest difference is that Windfury Weapon is 2 attacks. The totem is only 1.

so if i read this correclty . axe of the deepwoods with the flurry axe fails for lvling and i should get a slower weapon instead of the flurry 1 . im lvl 52 btw

Its "farmable" for that exact reason, I've been running it every day for 2 weeks 20 minutes before raid time. Its my white whale.

As for further models you can add my EquipOptimizer, which includes my Enh model.
http://code.google.com/p/wowequipoptimizer/

The other shaman models are just fine, they should give you correct results.
The holy priest model is fine too, the shadow model is not finished
The protection tank model is not completely finished, but the results should be ok.
Rogue isn't even started.

It has some certain problems with selecting the right gems and it has some problems if you actually lock too many item slots, you should always leave like 2-3 open, otherwise it might as well crash.

My thought was that INT would have such a low weight in comparison to the other stats that it wasn't worth calculating. But I suppose we should back that up with some math.

My approach with "weights" is to answer the question, "If someone gave you 1 item point, what would you want it to be?" Right now, the answer is 1 Str (weight 1.1). If you couldn't get that, you'd want either 1 CR or 1 Agi (weight 1) or 2 AP (weight 0.5). If you couldn't get those, you'd say 1 HR (weight 0.7).

Where does INT fit in there? I'll do a super rough calc that perhaps other people could refine.

1 INT = 15 mana.

Converting mana into damage: ES spam is 675 dmg / 535 mana, or 1.26 DPM. (Not accounting for FS/ES rotations or SS debuff, rough numbers.)

So the 1 INT gives 15 * 1.1 (kings) * 1.26 = 21 damage. Generously, we can say that you get to reuse it every 2 minutes because of SR, making this 21/120 = 0.18 dps.

(I'm overlooking the ES cooldown, because the max number of shocks in a 2 min window is controlled by mana, not by that cooldown.)

Tornhoof's sim and my sim agreed earlier this week that 100 AP would add about 22 dps (to someone with approx. full kara gear). That's 0.22 DPS/AP, compared to 0.18 DPS/INT. Ratioing down from AP's weight, the weight for INT should be about 0.5 * 18/22 = 0.41.


These are really rough numbers and there might be errors. But if they're approximately right, INT is so weak that you'd prefer even 1 point of AP to 1 point of INT.

Nice Pater but don't forget to add the miniscule spell crit rating that a point of Int gives as well

It seems to have some absurd droprate, which is a pity. I got mine on the first kill and I can't say I'm mad that I did :P.

I like seeing this result. It makes me feel good about giving INT at least some weight in my Lootzor string. It raises a couple questions for me:

What's the maximum mana pool required for 2 minutes of SS, ES/FS, and totems between Shamanistic Rage (plus mana pot) cooldowns?
I think someone has done this work before, but it's easier for me to duplicate it than to search for it.
SS x 120/10 = 236*12 = 2832
SoE, WF, Mana Spring x 1 + Searing x 2 = 225 + 243 + 90 + 153*2 = 864 (note this is with Totemic Focus, adjust upwards by 25% if this doesn't apply to you... now that I explicitly see that this talent is only worth 288 mana/120 sec = 12mp5, I might get rid of it)
Mana gained from Mana Spring = 12*120/2 = -720
ES x 120/6/2, minus one lost to GCD = 535*9 = 4815
FS x 120/6/2, minus one lost to GCD = 500*9 = 4500
Totemic call with 5 seconds left on totem durations = -238
2832 + 864 - 720 + 4815 + 4500 - 238 = 12053

We can then safely say that any INT which raises our buffed mana pool above 12053 is going to be useless, if we can get a refill off of SR + mana pot. If one waited until their mana pool were depleted by the amount of a Super Mana Pot at the start of a fight, chugged one, and then continued chugging each time the CD was up, you would get a larger "effective" mana pool without any more INT. A Super Mana is at least 1800 and averages 2400 mana, so if you accept the average, you don't need INT which raises the buffed mana pool above 9653. (Do pots still crit?)

Can we expect to fill that up with Shamanistic Rage?
Obviously, this is going to vary a lot with gear; and as most shamans know, it also depends on the fight (whether or not you can get a nice solid 30 seconds of attacking the ass end of a boss mob without having to move). We know that you get 15% of your AP back per proc. Do we have hard data on whether this is PPM or percentage-based?

I was under the impression that SR was PPM based, obviously no-cooldown.

SS x 120/10 = 226*12 = 2712
SoE, WF, Mana Spring x 1 + Searing x 2 = 288 + 312 + 115 + 196*2 = 1107
Mana gained from Mana Spring = 12*120/2 = -720
ES x 120/6/2, 5 seconds + 1 sec for gcd = 460*10 = 4600
FS x 120/6/2, 5 seconds + 1 sec for gcd = 430*10 = 4300
Totemic call with 5 seconds left on totem durations = -237
2712 + 1107 - 720 + 4600 + 4300 - 237 = 11762

With 2 extra shocks and the 5% extra damage adding up to a third extra shock in damage. With one out of the 20 proccing Elemental devastation for +9% crit as well on average.

With an Enhance/Ele spec of http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/...00000000000000

So it's a savings of only about 300 mana with 3 extra shocks of damage, and a solid chance at proccing +9% crit every two minutes.

SR in my experience seemed to be PPM, as with a two hander it was proccing almost every swing fairly reliably. However dual wield seems to be PPM per hand, so you end up with almost the same effect at about twice the rate. The description is also fairly typical of a PPM description on the tooltip.


Also keep in mind that once your attack power reaches a certain breakpoint the time frame changes. You'll be filling your mana pool and able to refresh all your totems inside the window of SR, and even get free shocks off as well.

With SR lasting 30 seconds and enough attack power, you can almost guarantee yourself full mana at the end of 30 seconds. With a full totem refresh.

So a full totem refresh is about 8 seconds with GCD I believe. Which leaves 22 seconds for other spells. Which is 3 shocks untalented, or 4 talented.

If we assume the enh/resto build and full mana at the end of SR we have:

SS x 90/10 = 236*9 = 2124
SoE, WF, Mana Spring x 1 + Searing x 2 = 225 + 243 + 90 + 153*2 = FREE (SHould be able to drop and recover during SR uptime)
Mana gained from Mana Spring = 12*120/2 = -720 (will be up during SR)
ES x 90/7/2 = 535*6 = 3210 (there's rounding here, but rounding down due to not being able to land a partial shock)
FS x 90/7/2 = 500*6 = 3000
Totemic call with 5 seconds left on totem durations = -238 (Should probably not count as it will happen during SR?)
2124 - 720 + 3210 + 3000 - 237 = 7377

With Enh/Ele:

SS x 90/10 = 226*9 = 2034
SoE, WF, Mana Spring x 1 + Searing x 2 = 288 + 312 + 115 + 196*2 = FREE
Mana gained from Mana Spring = 12*120/2 = -720
ES x 90/6/2 = 460*7.5 = 3450 (15 shocks, so one needs to be 8, averaging as it can go either way)
FS x 90/6/2 = 430*7.5 = 3225
Totemic call with 5 seconds left on totem durations = -237
2034 - 720 + 3450 + 3225 - 237 = 7752 (with 3 more shocks and 75% of the damage of another shock)

NOTE that these are only if you are able to maintain a shock rotation and re-drop all totems during SR, ending at full mana. If you are able to proc 400 mana/second, you can get 12000. 500 mana every two seconds (which is more reasonable at higher ends of gear) is 7500 mana during SR. The closer you can get to the end of SR with full mana without interrupting your shock/SS rotation, the closer to efficient you get. Right now I only ever seem to need the cheap combat mana pots to keep shocks going. Although I'm usually aggro capped before that, or have trouble keeping on the mob for the full duration.

Quick Conclusion
I have some overlap and rounding issues here, and will assume that hardly everyone keeps up a perfect dps rotation on every cooldown, or gets 100% uptime. These numbers are pointing at about 7400-7800 under optimum conditions and a certain level of AP. I'd say 8500 is probably the ideal amount of mana to allow for breathing room WITHOUT relying on pots. If you have pots you either can get more breathing room or a lower mana pool. Or save the cooldowns for non-mana pots.

I also hardly ever find myself using totemic call unless I'm moving away from my old totems, as I'd rather refresh them one at a time and not take the buffs off my group for sake of my mana efficiency. There's also water shield to consider, which procs off of many more conditions then Lightning Shield, so I usually keep it up all the time.

Not including CoE, imp. scorch, Misery or SS debuff is a mistake imho, ES+FS rotation is ~156 DPS. According to the simple maths I did comparing Bladed Shoulderpads of the Merciless vs Cyclone Spaulders, if you accept that it is possible to run OoM, there's definitely cases where going for the int is more advantageous.

I suppose creating a ratio isn't as useful as other stats, as after your mana pool is a certain size compared to your gains from SR, it stops contributing to your DPS. The fact that the question "how much int do I need" will vary for different encounters, your stats, and raid composition. With no gear changes, on one week of Gruul, I gained 3-4k mana per Shamanistic Rage. This week, with a Survival Hunter and two Warriors in my group (meaning I get Battle Shout for the entire fight rather than just the first half), I gained 7.5k mana.

They can, but generally, Fel Mana Potions are a better bet (3.2k mana restored).

Also, don't forget that Bloodlust is 750 mana. Obviously, you don't cast it ever 2 minutes, it needs to be considered.

I use WWS to give me an indication of how much mana will be restored in a given encounter. I believe it is PPM.

All this theorycraft is irritating though. Surely with all the high-end raiders we have posting here, some would have a heavy leather gear setups they can post experience about using?

6k unbuffed mana. 1400 unbuffed ap.

I never go out of mana in raids. I spam stormstrike every cast, and shock every single opportunity when threat isn't a concern. During unleashed rage, I mana dump every chance that I can, even using Fire Nova Totem / Searing Totem rotations =X. Mana is just not an issue unless my unleashed rage is interrupted somehow. (Void Reaver is annoying for this reason. I usually save my healthstones for Unleashed Rage, and just eat a few ground poundings).

We frequently have JoW up however.

Well, I'm nearly 100% kara leather and have been avoiding anything with mana for a while. The only time I have mana problems is when I forget to use SR.

All accounts of JoW make me rather jealous.

Pater, is that with a full shock rotation?

I'm really curious how you guys are managing to do it, since I know that, for example, on Magtheridon I can go all-out without worrying about threat, which means I can shock every CD, which means I need to chug at least 1 mana pot over the course of the fight -- even with 1494 unbuffed AP, 6.3k unbuffed mana. I can only assume that the difference is JoW? (Or are you on a clicking rotation for Magtheridon? That would also do it.)

Just to provide a contrary description of my experience on Void Reaver: I get to stay in through pounding (we brought a ridiculously low number of melee, like two, to our first kill last night) but I am threat-capped from just autoattacking + SS, so mana's not a concern there. (It might be if I had two piece Tier 5, as I would definitely take advantage of the instant-cast LHW on that fight. Even though it would increase my threat, I sometimes have to run out for pounding and/or pop a healthstone when I'm getting scared that I won't get healed.) I think if our 4th tank were better, I would not be quite so threat-capped, he really can't keep up with the first 3.

Panny -- occasionally I have mana problems when pushing shocks to the max. Most of the time the problems are SR-related, though: either forgetting to use it, or having some of it wasted because of shatter and the like.

With that kind of unbuffed AP you should be getting pretty much an entire mana bar back on Mag. The first 1-2 min of Mag are very mana intense because you (should be) redropping WF and SoE at each Channeler as you move. The last Mag kill we did I popped SR as soon as we started and just started burning mana down on the Channeler. After that just use it every time its up and you shouldn't have to use any pots. Do you not have paladins at all? If you do, and are not getting JoW, you need to yell at them. My paladins claimed they "couldn't keep judgments on" until I bitched about it non stop and made them do it. Now they keep it up all the time because they can see the huge returns we get from JoL and JoW.
You can bring more melee than that - we did VR first time last night also, had 4 tanks and 5 melee in the pounding the whole time. 1-2 Shaman can chain heal the melee through the entire fight with no issues.

Maybe there should be a few lines in the OP about which pally buffs are best for enhancement. In an ideal world, you'd get all four (kings, might, wisdom, salvation), but in reality we usually only run with three paladins. I tend to prefer kings, might, salve as my combination, due to the fact that kings and might mean I gain a healthy amount of mana back from each SR proc.

These are the pros and cons of each based on my experiences:

Kings - Increases all stats by 10%.
Pros: Good in almost every situation.
Cons: Causes a decent increase in threat generation due to harder hits and more shocks.

Might - Increases AP by 220.
Pros: More AP means stronger attacks, more SR mana returns.
Cons: Threat generation when combined with kings. Paladins have to buff this separately and refresh during battle.

Wisdom - Returns 42 mp5.
Pros: Best blessing for mana regen, shines on long fights.
Cons: Not always necessary with proper use of SR.

Salvation - Decrease threat generated by 30%
Pros: Best blessing for threat problems, allows 30% more dps.
Cons: Useless blessing when not threat capped.

In general, the other shaman always want kings, wisdom and salvation. I usually have to coordinate with the wisdom pally to get the five minute version of might and have it refreshed during battle. I placed that under con because if the pally is dead or healing then you're out of a buff after the first five minutes.

It's also worth noting (perhaps under might?) that on nights where we have a fury warrior in the dps group I tend to need salvation more, due to battleshout.

This is slightly off topic, but proper placement of totems helps a lot during the first 2 minutes of Mag. With 30yd totems you can place them between the first and second channeler and not have to redrop until you move to the third one. I usually end up dropping totems twice after the pull, and it makes a noticeable difference in my mana pool going into phase 2. I also save SR and bloodlust till the 3rd channeler, but that's just my personal preference.

I've noticed a lot of fights where good totem placement can make mana management much easier, like Mag and Hydross. Just make sure your group knows where you're placing the totems so they can stay near them.

One thing that seems conspicuously absent from the collected theorycraft is metagem choices.

EDIT: appears that relentless earthstorm is the best choice, after reading one of the source threads. Still -- would be an appropriate addition to this excellent summary.

99% sure the math was done in the itemization thread proving 3% is better. It's nicer now that it also procs on yellow damage instead of just white.

You too? My condolences ... although I'm basically numb by now ... I think I'm up to 25+ runs without seeing it drop. Exalted with consortium, got all sorts of ethereum keys, a fel barrier, etc ... but that totem .... that totem ... why. Why. Why.

In other news, my other white whale, Skulker's Greaves, was harpooned, brought to port, and made into exceedingly expensive perfumes in the deep hours of the night yesterday.

PS: A guildmate (and member of these forums) has been trying to talk me out of socketing those pants with 3 rigid dawnstones. He's been reading these forums closely and is insisting I go for triple +8 str.

Here's my armory, with me wearing them in all their unsocketed/unpatched glory:

http://armory.worldofwarcraft.com/ch...oroth&n=Khrash

Once I patch them later today, I'll be starting with a baseline of 1498 ap and 203 hit unbuffed. (If I push cap, I can change out edgewalker to rapscallion, and/or pick up a pendant of the perilous to replace worgen claw).

Advice on which 3 gems to stuff in them?

Grats!

I'd agree with your friend. I give STR a 1.1 weight and HR only 0.7.

Right now, I have 4cr/6sta in mine for the yellow slot, but that's because I just haven't gotten around to changing it since settling on the stat weights.


According to a few sims and other approaches, HR just isn't that hot above some level. You don't even need to be that close to the cap (25.5) before it starts giving diminishing returns. (As far as why this might be, I would guess it's because SS and WF only have 5% base miss rate.)

Yeah, I do redrop WF/SoE; I also drop Fire Elemental Totem for the first 2 channelers (we MD one onto the first tank and he tanks 2 in one spot), as well as earth shocking heals/shadow bolt volleys. I typically use my trinkets on the channelers but save my SR for Magtheridon, which lets me get a full bar back if I take a few seconds off of shocking. Heroism, I don't bother popping for the first 2 Channelers because I would just pull aggro, I usually save it for the 3rd or so. I'm going to assume that any difference left over is due to JoW; we usually carry 3-4 Holy paladins, maybe I can get one of them to start judging it for me.
Your friend is right. Go triple +8 str, or if for some perverse reason you want the +dodge rating bonus, use one of the purple +4 str/+6 sta gems.

Rob, once you've had a pally judge wisdom in a fight like Magtheridon where you're essentially standing there the entire fight (minus any backup clicking duties you may have), you won't want to ever go back. In the case of Mag, JoW restores just about the same amount of mana SR does when using SR every cooldown (SR restores about 410 mana on proc untrinketed in raids).

In any event, I too have harbored the fear of losing too much Int due to wearing leather but the more my Int goes down, I can see that it truly has a very small effect. Now I just need this link handy when I bid on rogue gear.

Can you elaborate on this point just a little bit? Since the WF bonus is not halved by dual wielding, why do you not want WF to proc on the off-hand? Is it because the WF bonus is applied to damage that's been reduced by the DW penalty? Or because itemization naturally lends itself to weaker off-hand weapons?

Offhand procs do less damage than main hand procs, and they share the same lockout timer. By minimizing the amount of offhand procs in comparison to main hand procs the theory is that you will generate more overall damage. This isn't quite as noticeable at earlier levels of itemization since it has been revealed that the AP from the Windfury proc applied to the offhand is not halved as you would expect, but once you reach SSC/TK/MGlad level gear it becomes much more pronounced as more of your damage is generated from AP.

drats - Good idea on the totem placement, don't know why I didn't think of that.

Krashz and Negative - I went through the itemization thread like 3 times and somehow keep missing the couple of posts that debated meta gems, if someone can summarize it up for me to put in the OP or link it, I'd be obliged. Quite busy at work right now.

There's a whole thread on that here:
The Change to Windfury and You! (does not apply to warriors)

The general idea is that the WF bonus isn't halved but the damage still is. Everytime your OH procs it's keeping your MH from proccing for 3 seconds.

Yes I understand that much, but why do they do less damage? Is it just from the DW off-hand penalty?

IE- mainhand attack WF damage would be: x+WF AP, offhand attack WF damage would be: x*.6 (or whatever the penalty is)+WF AP?

edit: OK I think I got it thank you.

Yes. The offhand damage is halved from what it would be if it were a main hand attack, then the bonus AP from Windfury Weapon's proc is applied.

Yeah. The original post is a little unclear on this, and it also has the consequence of CR being EQUAL to AP, after considering the item budget. Perhaps some clarification should indicate that AP and CR are equally good (approximately) due to their different itemization costs. It also means that Strength is superior to both, after considering Kings.

Is the goal of this thread for discussion, or only reference of 'confirmed' theroycraft? (The following seems out of place in the itemization thread.)

So, does anyone else juggle WF totem and AGI, trying to keep both up? I've got a hotkey for it (tied to stormstrike, to help time the WF Totem buff), but I really only use it in the "go nuts" portion of a fight - usually the low hp enrage portion where I'm trying to mana dump any way that I can.

For the record, my macro is:
/castsequence reset=6 Stormstrike, Windfury Totem, Grace of Air Totem;

It's bound to a more obscure place on my keyboard, due to it's infrequent use. It's pretty fun, although it really means you spend pretty much the entire fight in the global cooldown. I usually mix Fire Nova Totem in there too, since it's about the best mana dump I have.

Its been suggested a lot and dismissed by most as a waste of mana and mostly a "oh gee isn't this neat" sort of thing that isn't really useful. It puts you on GCD pretty much the entire time and requires most of your attention focused on that instead of on the fight or maybe helping top someone off that's about to die (although I guess macro'd its easier).

Yar. I think that's why I tend to use it in the "Oh God, Leotheras is going to enrage in 20 seconds!" sort of situations

I wouldn't bother without a macro. It's pretty low maintenance as long as it's hotkeyed properly.

This post is a decent summary of metas and boot enchants. I tried finding the math as well that I thought was there but couldn't find it.

http://elitistjerks.com/showpost.php...postcount=1212

Basically the haste gem has the internal cooldown that makes it pretty terrible, while the change to Relentless making it affect yellow damage makes it by far the better choice.

There's something that has been bugging me for a while. I always see people posting that you need a certain amount of hit rating to be effective, usually you see numbers around 20% or 200 hit rating. Or you see people concerned that they can't afford to lose hit rating. Is there really any truth to this though? I've been finding when using tools like pawn and lootzor that items lacking +hit often score very high. Since AEP ratings are designed to give a genuine value to items, are these ratings somehow broken? Or are players just clinging to the notion that hit is required out of habit?

My curiosity on this subject has led me to make myself a bit of a guinea pig. I've been taking items based solely on AEP style ratings for the last month or so, my hit rating has plummeted from around 220 to 111. My damage however feels like it's improved though I haven't been logging much data so I can't say with any certainty.

When Pater posted his sim one thing I checked right off was whether the relative value of hit rating changed depending on how much you had. I put in regular raid buffed values and lowered the +hit from gear to 0%, then I increased it by 5% and ran it again. I then did the same change again, going from 11% to 16%. The results came out as such:

0% -> 5% (9% -> 14%)
847.5 -> 875.8 = 28.3 DPS gained

11% -> 16% (20% -> 25%)
910.4 -> 940 = 29.6 DPS gained

Is there anything I'm missing? I'm trying find anything other than anecdotal evidence that a certain amount of hit rating is more beneficial than an equal amount of item budget spent on AP or crit stats. Certainly due to the non-linear cost you want items that have a balance of all DPS stats, but many pieces just aren't itemized that way. Should I be passing over items that score higher overall for ones that though scoring lower have a more even stat distribution?

Having high amounts of hit rating has the somewhat intangible benefit of guaranteeing lots of hits when you use SR, in addition to avoiding a situation where you are crit capped (not really a problem since 2.1). The magic number formula is purely in terms of DPS.

The rule of thumb I've been using recently (now that I'm actually starting to have a moderate amount of socketed gear available to me) is any piece where the bonus is useful to me from a dps standpoint (typically AP/or +hit bonuses) and I can reach the bonus using purely +hit/str/ap gems, I'll match colors.

Everything else +8 str.

That being said I was finding myself lacking due to getting pieces of dps gear with no +hit and trying to stay above certain minimums, so threw in a little extra +hit.

Regarding the whole paladin thing, we've had bad luck keeping active raiding paladins (horde guild). After having 4 people reroll as pallys with BC, 3 of them stopped playing due to one reason or another, and we're only now back up to 3 pallys. Typically running with one, 2 if we're lucky. So I usually end up asking for might and getting the opportunity for kings maybe 20% of the time.

True, however sacrificing some of that hit for for strength would go some way to compensating you. Just some quick numbers and my math is fairly poor so I may make some mistakes.

Lets assume 2200 AP and take 100 hit rating and exchange it for 100 str. We would lose 6.33% hit and I guess 6.33% SR procs? Our overall mana gain would go down by 6.33% as well if I'm correct. With kings and UR that 100 str would gain us 242 AP? Which would gain us an additional 36.3 mana per SR proc pushing them from 330 to 366.3 an 11% gain. So you'd get 6.33 percent fewer procs bu tthe procs would return 11% more mana, assuming no errors in my math which is a pretty big assumption. Either way it should be a small change.

You're correct as well that with the greatly reduced glancing rate the crit cap even without as much +hit is still quite high.

if you lose 6.33% hit, you loose (white swings / total swings) SR procs.

Assume you have 10 white swings in 10 seconds (2.6 weapons, perma-hasted).

You would also have 2 stormstrike swings, and probably 4 windfury swings that are unaffected by your drop in hit (since they're maxed out by your talents hit-wise).

So, instead of losing 100% * 6.33% = 6.33% SR loss, you actually have
10/16 = 62.5% * 6.33% = 4.0% fewer SR procs.

I think haste rating does in fact have an impact on WF, certain ammounts of haste rating can actually have a negative impact on DPS output. I dont know if this has been brought up on these forums already, but if it hasnt here is link to a fairly informative discussion about it http://forums.wow-europe.com/thread....sid=1&pageNo=1.

Edit: A different subject. We usually have a GoA-dps group, it consists of a druid, enhancement shammy (me!), rogue, hunter and a warrior. I'd like to see some number-crunching on dps output of such a group with GoA or WF, I'd think GoA wins in such a group. Also, in the OP's analysis of WF and Agi totem, the dps increase of the shaman itself with GoA isnt added, it should be! :p

The bonus damage that the dps warrior in your group puts out using Windfury is much higher then the rest of the group combined using GoA. At least in my experience.

This was posted at the bottom of Compilation:

On why Windfury Totem is almost always the best totem to drop for any group that has a warrior DPSing in it, or pretty much any group that is not just hunters and druids:
http://elitistjerks.com/showpost.php...2&postcount=40
A Fury warrior will gain 200-300 DPS from WFT, eclipsing any gains that other group, in total, would gain from GoA being dropped instead. A Mortal Strike warrior will gain even more from the totem due to 2H mechanics.

Nothing in that link struck me as the poster having any idea whatsoever what he's talking about.

The numbers are linked in my post. Why are people still coming and saying "I think GoA might be better...." when you can just try it out for yourself? Go do Magtheridon, use WF this week and GoA the next with the same setup. This isn't difficult to test.

This is a stupid group if you're outside Kara and you shouldn't ever see it in 25 man raids. If your warrior is halfway competent he will see tremendous gains from Windfury that will likely eclipse the DPS gained by the rest of the group from GoA.

I'd like to interject at this time that we have quite a few theories going on here, and I'm not sure how much they've actually been tested. This worries me.

If we didn't test theories, we wouldn't know about the Windfury offhand bonus being exactly what it is. (minor deviation from theory)

If we didn't test theories, we wouldn't have discovered the 36% chance to WF when dual wielding . (major deviation from theory)

If we didn't test theories, we wouldn't know that we're getting more flurried attacks than we should. (major deviation from theory)

Even blasted lands tests are fine for testing these out, but until they are tested, I'm not very comfortable with treating the results from any of this as being worth much.

For blasted lands tests, back into your numbers - run recap and find out what your actual crit rate and hit rate are, then plug those into your sim or formula. Find out how many auto-attack swings you had, compare it to what your model suggests. Find out how many windfury procs you had, compare that to the model. You wont have any dodge/block/parry/glancing, but the models and formulas need to be able to account for this situation as well, so you might as well start on the scenario that's easiest to test.

I'm not saying that any of the formulas or stat valuations are wrong, I'm saying that we currently don't seem to be confirming that they're right.

My guild is definately not the best out there, we've just started SSC 2 weeks ago, got 2 bossed down, and we are working on Tidewalker. But we seem to get the highest overal dps output with this GoA group thing. I dont see why anyone would deem this as a stupid group, 5% crit aura, battleshout, Ferocious Inspiration from the BM hunter (3% extra dmg), and totems + Unleashed Rage makes a damn fine dps group imo :p The druid also offtanks occasionally, and since their agro scales with dmg this group is also rather good for that, only thing he misses is an imp.

I understand perfectly well that the warrior's dps is WAY higher with WF, thats obvious. However, if the warrior uses stones on his weapons + GoA, the rogues uses poisons + GoA, and the other 3 dps get the benefits from GoA aswell... ah well, ill test it next Karathress, no holding back on that fight anyway. Sorry for asking

Do you not have a 2nd rogue? Only 1 in the entire raid? You'd get much more benefit from dropping the hunter out of that group and replacing him with a rogue. The DPS gain from giving Battle Shout to rogues is tremendous. And then get rid of the GoA and give the warrior and 2 rogues WF and you'll see far more DPS gains. And no, Stones + Poisons + GoA are not better than WF.

Unless you bring no other melees to your raid beyond one warrior and one rogue you can organize your groups better than this. As an enhancement Shaman you should have these people in your group in order of priority: DPS warriors, sword rogues, dagger rogues, LotP druids (LotP druids + BM hunters = happiness, so be nice and share them). If you use warriors for offtanks, having them in your group will allow them to build threat more easily with WFT and the extra AP, but they are usually better in the MT group for Imp/Tree buffs.

Having a hunter in the group for the BM bonus is not nearly worth the opportunity cost of having an additional melee gain the benefits of WFT. This is one of the most common mistakes that people make in organizing groups. Ferocious Inspiration is a flat 3% bonus to any sort of damage and it makes Hunters useful in any damage-dealing group, whereas the difference between GoA and WF for warriors and rogues is tremendous by the time you are in SSC. If you have a hunter in a mage group FI is roughly as effective as it is to a melee group, but that hunter will get far less benefit from shaman totems than a melee class would. If you have a rogue in the mage group when the hunter is in your group, you are crippling that rogue's DPS (no totems, no battle shout) and the hunter is not providing any real additional benefit (not affected by battle shout, WF does nothing, only receives half benefit from GoA/SoE). If you can provide WFT to four other melee classes you should absolutely be doing it, because nothing else will provide them with as big of a benefit as what you will.

Well, there have been more posts prior to that, and I'd suggest reading more than the OP only (check Aj, and Snorkle's replies). It truely seems like an interesting read. But to give small insight to what is being discussed there:

WF has a 3 second cooldown. Once it procs, it wont proc again in the next 3 seconds. With weapons of 2.6 speed, without flurry or anything, this means that WF *can* proc every other swing. So, WF, normal swing, WF, is possible. Now, what happens when flurry + haste-rating items make you swing faster than 1.5 seconds, lets say 1.49. To have a chance to proc WF after a WF you would need 2 swings instead of only 1. So in theory, when you get haste-rating items that make you swing faster than 1.5 seconds your WF proc rate *will* go down. Yes, your white damage will increase, but your WF dmg over time will go down. Your overal dps will be lower with 1.49 swing speed than with 1.5 swing speed.

The next question would be, how is the overal dps output when the swingspeed becomes 1.4, or 1.3, or even lower, it will be better than 1.49 thats for sure, but at what point will it be better than 1,5 speed.

The thread I linked discusses just that.

Note, this theory is about swing speed, NOT weapon speed. SLOW/SLOW is always the way to go when it comes to weapon speed.

But, if you feel that the original poster has no idea what he is talking about, please explain to me why that is the case. This thread was made by Aj and Snorkle, which are both well known on the european shaman boards for their theorycrafting.

I have always really apreciated these forums as a source of information, and tbh I'd expected a better response than "he just doesnt have a clue"

We usually dont have many rogues with us, or dps warriors for that matter. And my question wasnt "Is Stones + Poisons + GoA better than WF?". It was: Wont my group dps be better with goa, when it consists of a druid/hunter/warrior/rogue/me and the rogue and warrior use stones/poisons? :p

Anyway, lets drop this! Gimme your opinions on the haste-rating/swingspeed matter!

The haste-lowers-your-DPS discussion was hashed out some time ago; there are certain hastes that will lower your overall DPS, but they are pretty difficult to come by in actual practice. Mongoose is probably the main culprit of this but it only occurs at certain very uncommon weapon speeds (1.5 or 3.0, etc). It's pretty hard for any item that generates at least 5% haste to lower your DPS.

Hey!

As an enhancement shaman, I have problems often with my task being recognized (as a buffer).

So I have a petition tho whoever knows how to code, that would greatly help our spec.

Make an addon that calculates the DPS given to party by our buffs. This can be somewhat complicated, but at least some parts are easy.

By selecting Skill Details in swstats, you can get how many Windfury damage a player did. So, it should be easy to extract those numbers and summarize them up in a separate addon. I'm finding that rogues do an average 7% damage from my Windfury Totem, and warriors go up to 15%.

Now, this part was easy. How to calculate STR totem (or AGI if it's down instead of Windfury) and Unleashed Rage?

I'm sure the mats are not easy for certain classes considering instants and procs, but if Recap and SWStats can get so much accurate info about that data, it should not be hard for someone with enough knowledge on scripting and game mechanics to code something easy that can report at the end of the fight something like:

Tradewind's own damage: 340932.
WF given to party: +89023.
+STR given to party: +14932.
UR given to party: +40834.
Total damage added to the raid: 485721.

The problem with such an approach is that every other class will want to be recognized for its own "non-personal DPS contribution" and some are much more easy to quantify than others.

Also keep in mind that an enhancement shaman is compared to a restoration shaman when boosting the melee group.

Your contribution is 13 extra strength for SoE totem, 133 AP for WF totem and 10% AP (we could average this to 200 AP I guess although it is scalable) from UR.

I agree that previously ele/enh shaman were competing with resto shaman. But this comparison was a lot better pre-expansion than it is now.

If you take one of the many generic melee dps powerhouse groups for example...
feral,
dps war,
rogue,
rogue,
<some shaman>

A resto shaman can still provide great buffs to this group similar to an enhancement shaman. However the resto shamans totems and the other members group buffs (Battle shout, lotp) will be entirely wasted on the resto shaman.

The enhancement shaman drops marginally superior totems but also takes advantage of his totems and the other melee buffs. Also Unleashed rage is a 300 AP buff in a raid setting which is certainly significant since it is almost always up. With these factors altogether, there is a very significant gap in the raid strength of a melee group with an enh shaman and one with a resto shaman.

You really don't need an addon to calculate this you can do it ahead of time with a piece of paper and a calculator.

Sure, and you can sum all your damage lines in the Combat Log for the last 10 minutes fight and come up with your total damage.

Are you retard? I was speaking about something fight-specific, not some dumb and generalistic %'s everyone knows already.

Don't make posts like this please.

Thanks for the WWS logs -- looking at your armory, you have about 4% more crit and 100 more AP than I do, yet deal about 10-15% more DPS. I wouldn't think the delta was that large, especially with some of that being made up by my 6-7% advantage in hit rating.

After seeing how high your DPS is on the WWS logs, I'm definitely interested in a high AP / high crit build, and lowering my hit substantially to that end. Any additional advice on your gearing philosophy is welcome. Would you prefer 1600 AP / 28% crit or 1800 AP / 24% crit?

Indeed. The percentage increases make a compelling case for an enhancement shaman in a melee group.

Whether you top some sort of "contribution" meter is pretty irrelevant, especially with all the synergistic effects that go on in a group/raid (ie how much of your UR uptime was from the crit buff you got from a feral druid etc etc).

I was looking at the same thing. That's some pretty high dps for lacking that much hit. I guess when you hit something, you hit it hard. Those 2 weapons are super nice as well. I may be rethinking my hit scenario after seeing those WWS reports and your armory.

I think being a rogue before may have had something to do with my +hit lust.

I've been running with an Enhance/Elemental build for a while now, and find it to be fairly effective overall. The 5 second cooldown on shocks especially (helpful on damage and fights where I have to help interrupt), and elemental devastation procs often enough to make the talents worthwhile - kicking my crit up to over 40% quite easily.

My main selling point for it is the ability to maintain a full shock rotation much without having to go to pots (beyond the occasionaly combat pot), on a faster cooldown, and for more damage.

The resto options are good, but you seem to have to put so many points in for that 3%. The totem range increase does help, but is usually not overly necessary with careful positioning.

I'm also trying to go for AP and crit over hit, based on Disquette and Pater's simulation results; my gear's not as good as Sebudai's though. One thing that's not indicated by just a cursory glance at his character sheet is the haste rating he's got on his gear; note that his 2.60 speed weapon is dropped to 2.53 without Flurry. If the calculations thus far in the thread are correct, Haste should be very powerful.

I'd put the higher DPS weapon in your MH and the lower DPS weapon in your OH. The speed differential doesn't matter so much, but in general I guess I'd rather have a slower weapon in the OH since it's getting fewer WF procs.

One thing that might explain some of the 15% gap on Sebudai's dps from yours is that they're swapping other shaman into his group for bloodlust. He gets it 3 times on that fight, lucky bastard.

Well, based on numbers found in this thread 1 CR = 2 AP. 4% crit is 88.4 CR so it would only take 176.8 AP to equal the benefit of 4% crit. Thus 200 AP is probably slightly better than 4% crit.

A few months ago I did some math based on my own WWS parses to assign a weighting to each stat. This is when I first discovered that +hit was overvalued, and that crit and attack power are normally a better use of item budget for us. The weightings I came up with a few months ago are very close to what you will find in this thread, and since these guys are probably better at math than I am, I just use theirs.

1 CR = 1.43 HR = 2 AP. Decide how much you value stamina in comparison to those three stats and it will be very easy for you to figure out which items are upgrades for you.

Honestly it's best to not think in terms of stacking one stat. All three of these stats are good for us, and they all depend on eachother. You want all three of them, and what is important is the quantities involved. Yes, one of them might be the 'superior' use of item budget, but it's not like we get to design our own items. We have to use what Blizzard gives us. My hit rating isn't intentionally low because I think +hit sucks, that's just how it worked out for me by following the above stat weightings.

The randomness of drops had an impact aswell because I don't hold out for the statistically best upgrade. If an item is an upgrade, I'm sending on it, regardless of if there is a bigger upgrade out there.

Anyway, yeah we switch our Bloodlusts around like that a lot. Basically whoever benefits the most from it on any given encounter is going to get most, if not all of the Bloodlusts. Also, I've picked up quite a few upgrades very recently(bracer, ring, cloak and breastplate off the top of my head), so the gear in my armory profile is better than what I was using for those WWS parses I linked.

While I am leveling my Shaman (53 now) -- any comment on the utility of Figurine - Golden Hare (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=21756)? -- a lot of Draenei Shaman are also going to be JC alts. Has anyone measured the passive runspeed of the trinket vs the boot enchant? (I'll do it tonight if not) I have some other random JC trinkets but nothing special yet, I think all good trinket drops are BRD and higher. +8 AP is the best "offensive" trinket thus far, and based on the math in those linked threads I think run speed trinket might be better than +8AP.

(I'll move this somewhere if it's appropriate, I just couldn't find a better place)

It provides the same bonus as any talent, metagem or enchant does - +8% running speed.

So it's just fine while leveling JC, having a third escape option beside stoneclaw + spirit wolf and [Nifty Stopwatch]. But it's not really better then putting Enchant Boots - Minor Speed on your feet or using [Defiler's Mail Greaves] (of any level).

But there are several trinkets, i would prefer over it:
Tidal Charm http://www.wowhead.com/?item=1404
Figurine - Truesilver Boar http://www.wowhead.com/?item=21763 (not because of the AP, but the boar is really strong for this level)
Rune of the Guard Captain - http://www.wowhead.com/?item=19120 (Horde)
Lifestone - http://www.wowhead.com/?item=833
Linken's Boomerang - http://www.wowhead.com/?item=11905#00zc
Hand of Justice - http://www.wowhead.com/?item=11815

How would you value Haste Rating compared to CR/AP/HR - assuming your weaponspeed will remain over 1.5 with BL and flurry?

Probably something like 1 CR = 1.43 HR = 2 AP = 1 Haste Rating. According to math posted earlier in this thread it should actually only take 0.9 haste rating to equal the benefit of 2 AP/1 CR/1.43 HR, so I'm rounding up a little.

Hey Tornhoof, GREAT WORK on setting up the filters! There's only one problem...when I import my armory profile, and lock the items and do an optimization for gems (your v12 did seem to indicate that different gems were more useful depending on gear)...the entire program crashes and has to be restarted. Any idea whats causing this?

You currently can not optimize Gems only, you shouldn't take the Gems too serious either, since they are only optimized locally (for each item individually), not globally for all the items combined.

Few discussions I'd like to see:

Metagem choice?
Haste value as a stat?
T5 bonus VS T6 bonus?
2.7MH/2.7OH vs 2.7MH/2.8OH
+4STR/+4CR better than +8HIT at wich +hit threshold?
Tsunami Talisman VS Ashtongue Talisman

I'm sure you already know the answer to at least 3 of those questions by this point in the discussion.

Metagem - generally accepted as 3% Crit Dmg > Haste effect > soul shard gem > stam/stun resist

I believe we are treating haste as a 0.9 or 1.0 weight on stats.

The tiered bonuses I can't really speak of since I'm not up to that point yet, although the T5 2pc certainly has value for a player who plays to the hybrid/support style, less value to those who want to be a rogue in mail.

There is no detrimental effect that anyone is aware of from having an OH slower than the MH to the Windfury cycle, the only downside is that you lose the "bugged" flurry effect from having the same MH/OH speeds.

Str/Crit gems are always better than +8 Hit. No shaman should ever be using +8 Hit gems unless for some silly reason they chose not to grab the +9% Hit from talents.

The Ashtongue trinket was shown in the Itemization thread to have less AP bonus over time than the Bloodlust brooch did, so the Tsunami Talisman would likely be the better choice.

a- As long as you happen to have 2 blue gems use Relentless Earthstorm Diamond, failing that Swift Skyfire.

b- One point of haste rating is worth about one point of strength (only 3 posts above yours).

c- T5 4piece is roghly 3-4% dps, T6 4piece is closer to 2%, though the gains from having 4 pieces of the superior tier 6 outweigh this.

d- Conclusions have been inconclusive.

e- The str/crit gem will ALWAYS be better for all levels of gear from zero hit rating to hit capped (unless youre not actually enh specced, just wanting to do some physical dps with your resto spec).

f- On a stand and deliver fight the Ashtongue Talisman looks like a 137AP which is far superior to the Tsunami Talisman. Edit:: or not. Depends on the uptime of the Tsunami AP buff, one proc every 70 seconds or more often would make the Tsunami better than the Ashtongue, any less would favour the Ashtongue (excuse my bad midnight maths).

edit:: Beaten by Malan.

Here's the original analysis done on the Ashtongue -
Its an upgrade over the Bloodlust Brooch, but you lose the control over when the proc occurs.

Please, check this:



http://img161.imageshack.us/img161/5...izationry2.jpg

If you detect any flaw, tell me.

According to theory at least. This all would require testing to verify.

A man after my own heart ;-)

No thoughts yet on the flurry testing linked near the bottom of page 10, anyone?

I could lie and tell you I understood your Flurry stuff Disquette but I wouldn't be very convincing.

I was comparing the new Vet boots with the weighted values and it seems one pair is worth 62 points and the other 64. I was aiming at 50% raid crit with 1900-2200 atk power between trinkets. I figured the massive amount of crits would outpace the seemingly small amount of damage gains from attack power, especially from WF damage. Especially when I gain so much attack from trinkets and buffs, I thought the crit itself during the 15-20 second trinket periods would be a really big boost. Is 28 attack power really worth .5 crit chance?

If any1 is interested in 3 sec WF cooldown showing addon - try out my ACE2 WF3sec v0.4, btw lucky shamans with 1st tier5 set bonus will be surprised :-)

I don't like surprises, what's the surprise?

The main thing it shows is that having 2 identical speed weapons doesn't show much (any) bonus over having weapons that are very different in speeds for the purposes of flurry uptime.

it just shows Invigorated cooldown in center of the screen when it's on
If you don't like the position try to edit core.lua

Of course it's only a theory. The java script does not model procs like mongoose, dragonspine trophy, nor the proc of the 2.8 mace what is actually an increase in dps (stealing life does damage, not just healing)
But I wouldn't say the script is not useful at all. I'll try out a lot of weapon combinations.

50% seems high, ofc no one would turn down having that much crit, but how can u get it even close to that without sacrificing all hit/ap ?

I'm somewhat curious, Disquette/Pater or anyone else, have we modeled the effect of hitting SS every 10 sec when its lit versus only hitting it when a WF CD is up?

Btw I ran your sim today Pater and it matched EXACTLY the DPS I put out on Mag tonight. Well done sir.

What is Mag's armor mitigation?

I see u tried my addon? :-)

Thank you for posting this excellent source of information Malan and thank you for those who drafted and contributed to the theorycraft. My eyes were opened on several matters and I know my raid performance will improve as a result.

Just wanted to put up some data from my testing I did today. I had the Syphon of the Nathrezim (2.8 speed 100dps) from BT and just received a Netherbane (2.6 speed 93dps) and after reading this thread started to wonder which would be better in my main hand, considering so many people saying that you should always put the slower weapon in your off hand to minimize wf procs. But in this case, there is a 7 dps difference in the 2 weapons as well as the speed difference.

So I took my fugly neon axe and went to the Blasted Lands and beat on those level 55 unkillable mobs. I did a run of .5 mill damage with the slower weapon in my main hand, then took the dps measurement from Violation (trying to keep both str and agi totems up at all times), then again but with the faster weapon as suggested in my main hand. Then repeated those 2 tests again to double check and average. I could have probably done it more to be more accurate, but I was already seeing a trend. In this case, it seemed the slower, higher dps, higher damage range weapon was best used in the main hand, rather than having the slow weapon in the off hand. I know it's probably not too accurate, but the difference was on average of the 2 tests, 34 dps difference in favor of the slow weapon in the main hand.

So to double check this, I used Pater's java simulator and put in my weapons and something along the lines of my gear (couldn't remember the exact in raid values, so I just guessed, none the less, no matter the values, it's close enough to illustrate the issue.) And this is what I got:

It's not the dps difference I saw in game on a level 55, but again, the slower weapon in the off hand did not win out. So this goes to show ya, do your own testing on your own circumstances before just throwing that slower weapon in your off hand. In this case, the dps difference out weighed the gain from the weapon speed difference.

I'd like to hear other people's responses and testing in this area, as well as any thoughts and ideas.

Well after running Pater's sim for a while it pretty much confirms what we postulated before in that Potency == Fiery for DPS.

Average over five runs Potency added 9.4 DPS (simulated by adding 40 AP)

Fiery averaged out to 9.52 DPS.

I simulated fiery by calculating proc chance (27% for a 2.7 speed weapon like Planar Edge)
then obtaining number of procs from total MH attacks

Fiery MH = 264552 Attacks @ 27% proc chance

[top] 71429 Fiery Attacks @ 48 avg dmg per for 3,428,592 dmg

9.52 DPS increase

Fiery average damage assumes
* +10% Coe
* +15% Imp Scorch
* +5% Misery
* 1.025 Crit modifier (5% for +50% dmg)
* 0.87 Resist rate modifier assuming Natures Guidance.

So Technically i would say that Potency is better as it doesn't rely on outside variables in order to perform. And of course either are stripped by Crusader or Mongoose.

Might want to add that War Stomp and heals reset both swing timers, even if it's an invigorated LHW.

Got a question that I can´t quite seem to find answer. While we all agree that haste is good for shamans, then question - how good is exactly stacking different haste - remains bit unclear.

Source of my hesitation is item budget values. As haste does not stacks on 1+1=2 principle, wouldn´t we be better off not stacking haste? Let me explain.

Let´s imagine that we have two identical dps output equipment for the same slot. One with HR, other with CR/AP or what ever. Now, when we pick up another HR item and stack it up with our current one (don´t forget flurry as well), then would HR stacking formula render our previously equal HR item inferior in dps output to AP/CR/HR item, that stacks on 1+1=2 bases? Since you get full benefit from AP/CR/HR but only partial from HR stacks. So when we weight and HR item, it must have way superior dps stats when compared with a single item?

That question is becoming more and more important to me every day, since we are raiding BT. Atm i could apply for http://www.thottbot.com/i32749, but I cant really figure out, is it worth the dkp or not. As well as should I use battle drums while bloodlusted or wait until bloodlust wears off, what gives more overall dps?

Sorry if I missed the link to this earlier in this thread but could somebody provide it for me please.

Magna, this is acknowledged in the "Itemizing Enhancement" thread. Having a slow main hand is important as well.

Malan, not to take away from Pater's sim at all, but about it matching your dps figures... This would assume you had 100% time on target for Mag, had 0 weapon procs, no Heroism, and never used earthshock/flameshock... And that Mag, after any curses, fairy fire, sunders, etc, happens to have exactly the armor reduction that you have in the sim.

If you really want to show something cool, do the blasted lands tests (armor value = 23% mitigation) and match it up to the sim when using nothing special, then add more variables as you go (storm strike, windfury).

Well the war stomp I understand since its a cast time, but do we have combat log confirmation of the Invigorated reset?

Its on the first post of the thread, down toward the bottom.

Oops forgot all about that.

Invigorated does reset swing timer, I can go out and get a log report if needed, but casting an invigorated lhw right before a mh swing is due results in me waiting ~2 sec (from when the lhw was cast) for the next mh swing.

As to the comment on stacking haste, the game simply adds the haste ratings together and then applies them, so it is indeed 1+1=2, were it to apply them sequentially (like it does with flurry/heroism over something hasted by rating) then it would actually give more dps not less.

What about the enhance shaman who take Nature's Swiftness, does using that reset the timer as well?

I had a 0/13/x build for a while and healing with NS definitely resets the swing timer.

AFAIK, this is the normal behaviour when a global cooldown is used.

I am on the same line of thought.
While it may be a boost, I cant see why I would ever be arsed to do it.

I am a non-totem weaver, but I tried it for Gruul last time (well for a little bit) just to see if it was as annoying as I thought it would be.

There was visible benefit (roughly judging by ktm), between the time I tried weaving threat/wf and the time that I just ran WF. However, dancing around the cave ins, trying to keep shocks going, and shatters, I gave this up after I hit my first Shamanic Rage. My mana was getting eaten up faster (No more 5s ticks), and I just wasn't comfortable with the mana levels I was sustaining, the delay on shocks due to GCD and the chaining effect that had on SS (when using SS to try to proc WF after wfcd).

The fight just felt more chaotic to me. Part of that was just, obviously, not having a bunch of experience twisting totems. The threat benefit was there, but I really only saw the Arms warrior get a real win from that, because early on in the fight she had some spikes. Overall, it wasn't something that I really think is a great tactic.

I get nervous if I get below 50% mana - I like to have a big reserve to spam heals on myself for when I inevitably pull something I shouldn't be pulling, and I am prone to throw heals at people to help out when I can.

I only use tranquil air on very threat sensitive fights. I find I'm not really ever threat capped except when I'm using shamanistic rage, bugged judgment of light (320 healing procs), and heroism at the same time, in which case my treat sometimes spikes on omen up above 1300 tps; a number that I'm obviously not capable of generating with damage alone.

I did use TA on void reaver last night with a great deal of success, I was able to go all out the entire fight and came close pulling aggro at the very end. We have our melee dps stay in the entire fight instead of stepping out to avoid poundings. My dps warrior did unfortunately die to aggro with less than a minute left in the fight.

EDIT: Took the question to a more appropriate thread.

I am sorry but since i made addon for collecting cooldowns i newer got it to proc faster then 50 seconds, and i raid a lot...

Well that's the official WoWHead.com data for it and it agrees with all of the other major data mining sites.

What is everyone's experience with Shrouding Potions? After pulling aggro on VR a couple weeks back one of the guild alchemists sent me a couple stacks and told me to stop dying. Using them for a week on Teron and such where I have a problem with coming close to the threat cap seemed to make a difference, but I didn't have any hard numbers on it. The single best time I've found to use them is in the first 20 or so seconds of a fight so you start at very low threat with a slightly higher ceiling to deal with WF's unpredictability.

As for my latest experiences, I was forced to twist TA/WF during the last 20% of our latest anetheron to bloodlust my group. I was pretty much capped, while my rogues and warriors were safely behind. Managed to keep DPSing through it coming very close to pulling aggro, and I probably would've without twisting it. I would never consider it for a long term solution, I felt really pressured by the GCD and watching Omen, enough so that it wouldn't be worth the marginal gains.

I posted these 2 macros in the totem thread, I use them all the time instead of shocking, as I'm there to make the whole group's dps better, not just my own.

MACRO 14 "G/WF" INV_Misc_QuestionMark
/castsequence reset=9/combat Windfury Totem, Grace of Air Totem, stopmacro;
END
MACRO 15 "TA/WF" INV_Misc_QuestionMark
/castsequence reset=9/combat Windfury Totem, Tranquil Air Totem, stopmacro;
END

http://www.wowhead.com/?spell=28548

-800 Threat, sadly it has a 2 minutes cooldown. Seems not worthy like all the trinkets excluding [Prism of Inner Calm] (if/when it's working as intended).

I wonder if anyone can help me with the following:
I usually time my Shamanistic Rage in combination with Lust for Battle (278 ap from Bloodlus brooch trinket) and Blood Fury (orc racial, 282 ap). Now Id like to get these three actions into a single macro but failed in typing the proper macro for it so far.
Anyone here can give the right Macro for that?

Note: The order of actions = Blood Fury -> Bloodlust Brooch -> Shamanistic Rage
Bloodlust Brooch is equipped in my first trinketslot.

Thnx!

the macro is

/stopcasting
/cast blood fury
/stopcasting
/use bloodlust brooch
/stopcasting
/cast shamanistic rage


you can use this same thing to insta trinket/em/ns/cl just use /stopcasting and use or cast whatever you want in order

Blood Fury starts gcd isnt it? this macro wont work.


i'd write something like this

/castsequence reset=15 blood fury, bloodlust brooch, shamanistic rage

mash 3 times

note: this will not work if something on cd...

another version will be

/use bloodlust brooch
/castrandom blood fury, shamanistic rage

again you need to mash it

No, the macro he gave DOES work, as trinkets afaik dont start the gbc
So /cast Blood Fury
/use Bloodlust Brooch
/cast Shamanistic Rage

Thnx for the help!

Does anyone have a good addon or suggestion how to notice that "Invigorated" has procced (instant heal, T5 2-set bonus). With all the raidbuffs beeing on (~15 total) its bit hard to notice, but really useful to top yourself or someone esle off without loosing more than a glc.

I believe you can customize Scrolling Combat Text to show specific gains always as for example message or critical, making it easier to spot. The readme shows alot of information about this and how to do it.

If you use SCT, find sct_event_config.lua and writhe in this line:
You need to enable custom events ingame:
/sct menu
find Animation/Misc. Options

Meh. My raid leader is now encouraging me to pull aggro and die so that I can just a get a threat wipe.

I find they key to low threat generation is well timed shamanistic rage and totem weaving with it, also dropping traq at the start of the fight for 1-2 mins also helps.

I've had decent results with just ragging on our tanks till their TPS improves.

While my raid leader doesn't encourage me to pull aggro and die, often times, on fights like VR its the only thing that can be done. Have to love the Shaman's Feign Death.

Also, up until now I haven't played around with totem weaving, I think I am going to mess around with the Windfury / Tranquil Air mix a bit and see if that helps out at all. Honestly I think the mana could be better spent some where else, but lower DPS is better the no DPS I suppose.

I used to have great problems with aggro as well of course, but I have to say, that after our recent nerf, our tanks are way ahead of me threat-wise. So if any of you is experiencing this kind of problem now, i'd suggest providing your tanks with link to some basic tanking mechanics forum (or some equip - I didn't believe Stigmata he has no threat problems at all on Maghteridon for example, but after our tanks got few items, its the same for me).

Of course things get nasty on Void Reaver for example, but Big5 combo (BoS, TA, Subtlety enchant, Fetish of the Sand Reaver and Prism of Inner Calm) still works like a charm and I can go full damage.

Theres no need to pull agro as an enhancement shaman fighting Void Reaver simply becouse that encounter isnt about enhancement shamans (or any meleeclass for that matter) maximising their dps - its about a raid surviving while doing a certain amount of stable, reasonable dps.
Threat rly isnt an issue any longer imo, except for a few fights (for example gruul, morogrim, magtheridon) where its there for a reason, namely preventing the fight from becoming even more easymode than it already is.
So for any encounter where you hit a threat-cap: just slow down your dps, its ok, its working as intended and theres no need for more of your dps to win the battle. The majority of current encounters however, does not suffer from any of these threat-issues - sadly enough they have other ways of capping our dps output to a level that is fitting for our role as support-dps.

I think out of our current killable bosses, Void Reaver is the only one I have any real difficulty with threat. While I can stay alive through 75% of the fight, the last 25% or so I usually start capping out and its harder for the tanks to push past me, not impossible, just harder. Usually at the 25% mark I either remove the Windfury enchants from my weapons or die.

As for fights like Morogrim and Magtheridon, I never have problems with threat, ever. I can push my dps to its max and don't have problems. Of course at the moment my weapons are a bit on the fast side, but even once I have the slower weapons I don't think it will be a problem. We have some pretty amazing tanks.

One thing I had completely forgot about, is the Subtlety enchant to cloak, going to have to get that.

I've glared through this whole thread, but I couldnt find any post(Maybe I'm just too tired for this at the moment) about 4p Gladiator gear(Mostly s2)?

(4) Set: Reduces the cooldown of your Stormstrike ability by 1 sec.

Wouldnt this result in 10% more total SS damage done? Would this be worth considering for a raiding shaman to use?

Anyone that's in a better shape to try to calculate how much DPS this would end up as (Keeping in mind that this would result in raid nature damage getting a bit more boost aswell.)

Off the top of my head I'd say you'd risk losing more DPS than you'd gain since there's a lot of itemization points spent on Resilience, and the 2pc bonus is providing little to no benefit in a raid.

I'd figured as much about the 2p bonus, I guess it's really a matter of where you are in gear progression, (T6 would not be worth switching out, but maybe Karazhan epics?)

ok, I've read this thread and read some of the player feedback and I just want to confirm what I did was the best choice.

I used to have 1446 AP, 212 HR and 24.45% Crit.

Since then I have changed my gems around to reflect 1472 AP, 188 Hit and 25.99 Crit.


Was this the right choices? (basically changed the +8hit gems to the +4crit/+4str gems) or did I make a mistake at understanding priority stats?

Yes it was the right choice. I actually made the same change recently, I was sitting about 3 hit rating below the Hit Cap (25.6% I believe - with talents of course). Recently changed hit gems for 4crt/4str gems or 8 str gems.

I've had a few people on my server ask me about a certain Hit level they should be aiming for, generally tell them there isn't one but 170-180 is a nice number. Right around the 19-20% hit range. I can't say for sure this is the correct area, a lot of the enhancement shamans here raid with much less and are further progressed then I am, its just what I aim for and like.

You can use Power Auras to display an image on any part of the screen while the buff is active

Removed.

its been said wf on warrior/combat rogues are much much more beneficial than wrath of air. If you guys have a enhance sham, put them in the melee group if not i suggest you stay with melee for str and wf but switch out to another group just to drop mana tide.

Hi, i have browsed the 15 pages of this thread that i was linked and i am finding it Very informative. Thanks for all the hard work you fellas have done with this theory crafting and i am hoping it will help me more in the future.

Although before reading this thread i think i have made some bad choices in the way of gear.

http://armory.worldofwarcraft.com/ch...issan&n=Tilley

If some one could take a browse over that and tell me where i should improve although i am pretty sure i know where, for example. 1.5 offhand is a bad idea and i will work for the 2.6 speed offhand. I replaced some gems with +8 str over +16 ap but kept some of the major ones like +20 AP because by my calculations it was better then +8 str. I have done this with a few gem slots, Also my trinkets need replacing but i think they are the main issues.

Any advice would be much appreciated and any item recommendations that are easily obtainable would also be much appreciated.

Thanks for your time.

Have you tried my addon?

Your talent tree is a mess. You didn't pick up Unleashed Rage which means you are now a DW DPS shaman that offers little to a group over a resto shaman except that you still can't heal worth a damn because you don't have the deep Resto talents. You need to at a minimum pick up Unleashed Rage. I'd recommend dropping 2H Weapons and Healing Way and probably NS to make up the points you need for that. I can't even fathom raiding without Shamanistic Rage so I'm not sure how you're getting along without it.

Why is the Violet Eye badge the best trinket that you have for that slot? You didn't pick up the Bladefist trinket at least from Hellfire Peninsula?

+150 Health to Chest is a Tank enchant. You need to use +6 Stats instead.

Your weapon enchants are horrid - I'm hoping those are only because you're working on the mats for some real enchants.

Adding to the above I'd look at switching up your offhand to a slow 2.6 speed weapon. You're in around the same boat as me right now having a nice high offhand DPS wep that's too fast. Slow down that offhand so you can stop eating your WF procs. It looks like you do a bit of PVP so I recommend picking up an arena one-hand wep. You'll probably do much closer to rogue DPS with just that.

I've only been enhance for 2 weeks now and my DPS is sorely lacking because of the wep in particular. It's really painful to see WF proc for around 2.5k-3k damage on main hand and a weak 1k-1.5k on offhand. And to see it many times over because of the speed is just that much worse.

Another thing is try gemming up your hit rating. AP is important only if you're actually connecting with your target. Pick up that hit rating to at least 150 through gems if you can and add some AP/crit after you hit that cap. It helped me a LOT.

During Karazhan raid's i seem to be in the top 3 of the DPS at all times against opponents that out gear me by a mile. I am currently testing some DPS theory's in blasted lands on some mobs and i am hoping to pick up the PvP 1 hander before the Arena 1 hander to confirm these theory's.

And a reply to the above post, I was informed by several raiders that its mandatory to have 8,000 health unbuffed which was my goal. Also the weapon enchants were for free i was helping someone level up while i get my mongoose. My talent tree is such a mess becouse im still required to heal in gruuls where as i DPS in Karazhan so its kind of a mix and match situation at the moment.

You need to read a bit more of the testing presented in this thread regarding this.

I have read that +8 STR Is the most beneficial gem so when i could i tried adding that to my Armour.

Running a test on some mobs in the outland using a DPS meter addon i discovered i did over a 70 second fight.

Gladiator's Left Ripper
Binds when picked up
Off Hand Fist Weapon
95 - 178 Damage Speed 1.50
(91.0 damage per second)
+21 Stamina
Durability 75 / 75
Requires Level 70
Equip: Improves hit rating by 9.
Equip: Improves critical strike rating by 15.
Equip: Improves your resilience rating by 10.
Equip: Increases attack power by 28.

I sustained 919 DPS over the fight.

and with

Colossal War Axe of Power
Binds when equipped
One-Hand Axe
94 - 176 Damage Speed 2.60
(51.9 damage per second)
+38 Attack Power
Durability 75 / 75
Requires Level 63

I sustained 929 DPS.

All the variables used were the same each fight finishing in exactly 70 seconds.

Disappointing that i wasted my arena points on this weapon before i considered the mechanics of a shaman.

Also i do not have any solid math on the situation however, I noticed that i did roughly 20-40 more DPS on each fight by using stormstrike whenever the Windfury cool down was up instead of just button mashing it.

Just a thought, I would have a discussion with your Raid Leader and officers about your roll in raids. If they are so short on healers that they need to make an Enhancement shaman heal they need to do something about it.

I personally will carry my healing gear around and if they are wiping on something because we are short just a little extra healing I will help out, but I do nothing more then throw an occasional small heal at someone if I see them low most of the time. Using that Hybrid spec, you suck as both a support healer and the support dps roll your suppose to fall into as an Enhancement.

You may be able to put out some great numbers for your own DPS, but not taking Unleashed Rage is just silly, not to mention Shamanistic Rage. Both those talents are pure gold for us, the first one being pure gold for the melee classes in your group.

As for the gems, Inscribed Noble Topaz is decent as well.

Edit: And your an Orc, get some Axes!

After looking over all this, there is some really great information here. What I am curious to see is some different ideas from people as to the "perfect" pve gear set up from all available gear. Rank maybe your top 2 items in each slot.

Talking all the way threw BT and HS. I'm sure people have a lot of different ideas and everyone says that you need x amount of hit, crit, ap. But how about compiling it all in a full set, make the gear work to actually achieve those perfect stats. Personally why my goals are is 1900ap, 29%crit and between 180-220 hit. ATM I'm sacrificing hit for strength and crit (also waiting on a decent offhand. Will most likely pick up the MerGlad mace on tuesday).

Not really. I have around 7k unbuffed and have no trouble, and there are shaman with less than that who raid just fine. Now as I understand it there are some fights in Black Temple that require everyone in the raid to have 9k health minimum, but looking at your gear right now you don't need to be so worried about that.

Your guild is doing no good by having you split your talents so badly between Resto and Enhance. You'd be better off going full Resto if you aren't picking up Unleashed Rage.

I'm sure the best weapon to use in main hand and offhand is Syphon of the Nathrezim. There was an "Enhancement shaman lootzor" link somewhere to see the best 5 items in each slot.

Thanks for all the great advice i guess its one of those. I am enhancement or i am not raiding situations.. I will begin warming the bench

Here's the top 10 items in each slot.
http://www.lootzor.com/index.php?c=7...u1hedu.7heeu.5

I'm amazed of how many people reply to this post without reading the OP, almost all the info is right there.

Never said I didn't read this entire post and I've seen lootzor. Thats a pretty easy answer for what I asked. I for one am not going to punch in some numbers into a program and blindly take what it says. Sure that program may help a bit, but really take a look at some of that gear.

.. we have .. what's wrong with it?

I don't think lootzor has any hidden agenda, it just scores items based on the stat values you give it. If there's something lacking in the gear that scores well, you need to look at what you were asking for and adjust your criteria accordingly.

But you'll ask us and blindly take what we say? I'm not sure what the difference is, especially since a lot of guys will simply say "here's the lootzor values I use".

No, I know what I want. I'm just curious what everyone else's top Items are. I don't see why this is causing an argument/discussion or confusion what I'm asking. Was hoping to start some sort of discussion as to x-item vs x-item and people's reasons for liking one thing over another. We aren't supposed to have all the exact same gear.

When the trinket is working I think it will be great for enhancement if you have a high enough crit rate. From what I understand though people that are testing this trinket (over in the Omen/Threat thread in the UI forum) are saying it doesn't appear to be working correctly.

Regarding Rank 1 Earth shock, I'd say 2 things would prohibit that - loss of damage from only using rank 1 earth shocks, and the low spell crit rate enhance has.

Ashtongue Trinket stuff - is 200 Stormstrikes a large enough statistical sample size to use for analysis?

Im doing some more testing today after the Raid to see if the 95% is really accurate.

Concerning the [Prism of Inner Calm], my Omen is not Calculating in the Trinket at all.

Please don't quote things already proven false, its pretty damn clear you haven't properly read what was written or you wouldn't be signing that post either.

As I said before, at first I observed a proc rate of around 80% when dual wielding and assumed this was caused by 2 weapons each having a 50% proc (which would give 75% uptime, well within acceptable range of 80% for the number of stormstrikes I had time to do). However EU servers went down before I had time to test with just 1 weapon to see if it really was a 'dual 50%' proc or just plain high. The proc rate observed with 1 weapon was once again 80%+ showing it had nothing to do with dual wield and that the '50%' label on the trinket is false.

I think this formulas are needed in the 1st post.

In full Enhance Build with Elemental Weapons (+40% WF Damage) and Weapon Mastery(+10% Melee Damage)
Put in an AP value that you will have when completely buffed with all procs and totems included (c) Disquette

MainHand Damage
(<Weapon Damage>+AP/14*<Weapon Speed>)*110%
MainHand WF
(<Weapon Damage>+(AP+WFAP+<Totem of the Astral Winds>)/14*<Weapon Speed>)*110%*140%

OffHand Damage
(<Weapon Damage>+AP/14*<Weapon Speed>)/2*110%

OffHand WF 2.1 patch
((<Weapon Damage>+AP/14*<Weapon Speed>)/2+(WFAP+<Totem of the Astral Winds>)/14*<Weapon Speed>))*110%*140%

You may use my Online PHP Script to calculate damage.

And BTW Weapon Mastery makes only 12.73AP=+1DPS

I'm confused, how are you relating 10% Weapon Damage to Attack Power?

Hedin, you should probably note that you don't plan on Unleashed Rage giving additional bonuses in that example. Or perhaps make it clear that you mean "put in an AP value that you will have when completely buffed with all procs and totems included". By the way, I like that you adjusted the formula properly for OH WF 2.1 :-)

Malan, I'm not sure where you're getting that. The only 10% I see in there is from Weapon Mastery, which does affect the overall swing.

From his last statement
Am I reading that wrong or something? Isn't he saying that 10% Weapon Dmg = 12AP or 1 DPS?

A very interesting thread with a lot of good info in it, thanks to all those who have contributed so far.

I'm currently elemental, but the guild has no enhancement shamans so our melle do pathetic DPS, I'm currently collecting enhancement gear and will respec this tuesday when i get this weeks arena points for the mace.

I got the [Darkmoon Card: Wrath] and will give it a try, it looks promising, should be quite nice for my very low level gear.

I also have this weapon [Rivenspike], I plan to try in my offhand -600 AC raid wide buff would fit quite well with my role as enhancement, being one of very few 2.9 weapons, I'm hoping it will still produce resonable WF dps when my AP gets up. At level 60 this weapon proc didn't work because of the low debuff limit and 40 people it would just get pushed right off, at 70 my raid runs very low on shadow priests and locks. I also have the [Bashguuder] with any luck I will beable to duel wield them the first 10 seconds of the fight to get 3 procs, then just have the offhand keep the proc up.

AP is a buff to DPS but it is realized as addtional damage added to each swing so I believe what he is saying is that weapon mastery multiplies the damage of the swing and therefor multiplies the contribution of AP and therefor with weapon mastery 12AP is roughly equal to 1DPS instead of the unbuffed value of 16ishAP per DPS.

At least I hope that's what's going on otherwise I just embarassed myself by posting in a melee thread.

There's no need to sign your posts. We know who you are by looking at your profile.

Oh ok, that makes more sense. I thought he meant that Weapon Mastery was equivelant to 1 DPS, and that seemed pretty far fetched.

I misstyped the formulas for original swings... now thay are without WF *140% :-)))

On consumables - is there a clear winner on which Pots/Elixirs to use? I know quite a few people use Flask of Relentless Assault, I was using Fel Strength until recently and then started using Agility pots instead. Whats the order of importance of the three?

I've got a bit of money to burn, so I usually use Fel strength/Mageblood and then grab some Scrolls of Strength and AGI V.

Well using Pater's AEP values:

Flask = 120
Major Agility = 110
Fel Strength = 90
Major Strength = 77

I'd say the flask is the clear winner, especially for content where you will be wiping. For easier farm stuff agi gives better bang for the buck than the other pots.

OK, i did 468 more SS Hits with Ashtongue Trinket resulting in 420 Proccs (leaving out Misses that cant procc) = 89,7% Procchance

Strange. Do you think its just bugged? Maybe checking to see if the other effects for elemental and resto are also the same higher proc rate would be a good idea.

Edit - added this info as a note to the trinket section to indicate that it might be bugged.

Have you tested this against higher level mobs as well? Some procs are inflated by level difference.

According to some comments on wowhead, the effects on darkmoon cards wrath and crusade stack on themselves, meaning you could use x2 wrath or crusade. That'd be pretty nuts with double crusade, a static benefit of 240 ap.

I don't do much math theorycrafting, but from reading the posts in this thread and others I would think the trinket hierarchy would be something like
Ashtongue > Tsunami > DST > Hourglass > Bloodlust Brooch > Abacus > Crusade/Wrath

Any thoughts? Maybe I'm way off, and I'm not sure where prism of inner calm would fit into there.

The 468 Hits were all done during the Raid in Mount Hyjal, so the Mobs are rather Highlevel :P

Id say Trinket hierarchy is:

Ashtongue> DST > Madness o.t.Betrayer > BLoodlust Brooch > Tsnunami > Hourglass

Not sure about the Proccrate of Madness Trinket, could be better

:>

If we apply AEP values to the trinkets we get:

Ashtongue = 234 assuming 85% uptime.
Dragonspine = 202.5 assuming 1.5ppm, I get higher ppm in testing but not in raids so this is probably a conservative estimate.
Betrayer = 112 + proc which I'm not sure how to value, someone on wowhead is claiming 2-2.5 ppm on a sword rogue which seems pretty significant.
Tsunami = 141 assuming 0.9 ppm.
Crusade = 120 once it's stacked up which should take 10-15s, so a bit less in practice.
Bloodlust Brooch = 118.3.
Hourglass = 109 assuming 0.9 ppm.
Abacus = 107.3.
Wrath = too hard for me to figure out, another thread came to the conclusion it was quite poor for anyone with a reasonable amount of crit though.

I don't have any numbers yet because the WWS hasn't been uploaded, but i can confirm similar results with the ashtongue trinket, i'd say 9/10 SS would result in me having the buff.

Running with 35-40% crit and 2700AP is damn nice.

I broke 1400 DPS on Akama and 1200 on teron this evening.

On the pot/flask debate, I prefer agility, flask has the benefit to not reapplying it, but 5 pots usually does me a full nights raiding since we don't have the learning part now.

Just need dragonspine now, killing gruul since 17th Feb 07, had only 1 drop

I prefer flasking right now; depending on how cheap marks of the illidari are on your server it is actually rather cheap. I can get marks for ~15g on Malganis if I'm diligent in AH trolling. Another thing in flasking's favor is EJ pc's and internet connections are always terrible in the summer for some unknown reason, and until recently I had a <6 fps on many boss fights leading to my untimely demise more often than I would like.

Here is the Teron WWS Stigmata - WWS

I'm not sure what the ashtongue buff is showing as on there? possibly power surge?

Teron 18 procs out of 27, also 17/32 and 13/17 on two wipes
Bloodboil 18 procs out of 38

The sample is way to small, but I didn't get the trinket until after we killed akama, so looking at the full raid wouldn't give a better idea either.

Teron DPS was 1362, which I think is the highest i've had in BT so far on a fight that lasted more than 5 minutes.

Okay i just saw the new violet eye rewards, and the leather chest kinda caught my eyes, (http://www.worldofraids.com/news/new...ye-rewards.jpg) is it worth it to farm for it? I currently have the nightbane mail chest, but i seriously need more hit.

Yes, anything with a rating is added together to give a total % haste that comes from rating. Anything that has a flat % effect is applied on its own as a multiplier.

What about DST, does it have it's own buff icon etc, while still being haste rating? Is it added up with the passive haste rating, or applied on it's own?

I would love to see a model (or numbers) showing the perfect amount of passive haste along with with x2 mongoose, dragonstrike, and flurry to hit a 1.5 speed on the nose.

2.7/1.02/1.02/1.3 = 1.9962736/1.5 = 1.3308 = 347.39 rating, -212 for dragonstrike = 135 passive haste needed.

You then get 2.7/1.02/1.02/1.3/1.3305 = 1.5004 speed.

valestalker + mukoa + 2x band of devastation = 36+37+31+31 = 135 passive haste, its almost like its planned :P

Assuming haste is handled the way Khlysti described you would need 135 passive haste rating to hit almost exactly 1.5 with the items listed. It's really not useful to know though since you'd be optimizing your gear for a situation that will only happen rarely. Any compromises you made to reach that goal would almost certainly hurt your DPS overall.

I hit 1.5 pretty regularly in raids, I however do not have any of the passive haste items yet. Cataclysm flurry (1.35), 2x Mongoose(1.02, 1.02), Dragonstrike, and Drums of Battle(1.278) = 1.504.

Flurry and dragonstrike proc are not a rare occasion

Probability isn't a strong area for me and this is probably oversimplifying but given 80% uptime on flurry(pater's sim @ 30% crit) and 2ppm for dragonstrike(what I've observed in testing), the likelihood of both buffs being up at the same time is roughly 27%. Throw in 2 mongoose procs at 2ppm and you'll only spend about 7% of your time with all those buffs active.

These are pretty rough numbers though because I don't take into account buffs refreshing themselves or any changes to proc rates due to the extra haste. Still, the numbers should be in the ballpark and I'd maintain that optimizing your gear choices for a very small amount of time is not the best way to plan your upgrades. I know for myself I'll just pick the items that offer the best individual stats and try to make sure my average haste doesn't put me between 1.5 and 1.41.

The 2 ppm from dragonstrike doesn't seem right, I'm certain its up more than that. On a slightly different note, I had 8 back to back procs a while back, the druid tanking was like, why do you have a permanent sprint animation.

edit: after looking at some WWS it would seemt he proc rate may be below 2 ppm, this seems strange because I tend to look at my character screen alot during raids, to see weapon speed, ap and crit (just to see what it spikes too) And the weapon speed are often hovering around 1.5 or lower, which I dont think would be the case without the dragonstrike proc.

Another thought, does wws pick up a refresh of dragonstrike if i dont lose the buff?

No, it doesn't. It's really quite annoying for tracking Flurry uptime. Also, if you have a Dragonspine Trophy, the buff is called "Haste" as well, so it's quite hard to actually tell how often they proc.

2 PPM sounds okay to me, are you factoring in the fact that all those haste procs increases the chance for further haste procs?

Is there any addon to track the MH/OH weapon speed over time? Can someone do it?
I'm thinking about a simple addon that summarizes weapon speed data like this:
"Time spent in combat: 300 seconds
Weapon speed, seconds, % of time spent
2.6, 45, 15%
2.0, 240, 80%"
and so on...
I think it would help us a lot to get real tested data.

Going from [Fel Edged Battleaxe] to [High Warlord's Cleaver] in the OH added 136DPS for me on our last Tidewalker kill.
I've only received some minor upgrades and dumped some +hit for more crit and AP. Needless to say time spent reading here is time well spent!

WWS

WWS

Thanks to everyone contributing to this thread, keep it up!

Something seems odd with those logs.. In the first one you clocked in 22% white crit, while in the second you hit 38% white crits???

Same for other skills, WF went from 18% to 32% crit, while stormstrike seemed the most normal at 24% -> 28%.

Was your group setup radically different, or something? That seems like an awfully large difference in crit to chalk up to WoW RNG streaks.

The first one is the old one, and I had way more hit rating there then I'm using now. I think I was close to hit capped. I suppose that would lead to more white hits, and I had 2 rogues, warrior and a feral druid in my group on the last one. Compared to a warrior+3 rogues last attempt.

So okay, it wasn't only the OH weapon change, but I'm sure that contributed aswell!

Sorry to quote myself here, but I haven't seen any responses. I have been watching this very closely, and even with an elemental shaman in my group last night to eat up the SS buff, I'm still seeing this trinket's procs making up 2% of my damage (though Recount doesn't give me 1/10th of a %, so that's as detailed as I can tell).

On Netherspite, with the Elemental Shaman in the blue beam, I used a different trinket to give him the full SS buff, so I can see that making a difference as far as usefulness, but I still would like to see the difference.

Oh right sorry missed the vial completely. 35 Hit Rating valued at 35/1.44 = 24.30 AEP with some sort of value from the proc... unless you're starved for +Hit this has just really turned out to be a poor trinket for shaman.

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Just noticed we're not using the same scales for the trinkets, to match up with the other ones I posted they would have values of:

DFT = 84
KotS = 92
Romulo's = 49 + proc. This might not be a terrible trinket after all. Assuming 2ppm which I think is a bit conservative with WF it would add on average 9.3dps. You could argue that is equivalent to 129ap, of course it doesn't synergize with our yellow damage(except for possibly stormstrike by a small amount) so it would roughly only add 1/2 the value of straight attack power. I would say a conservative estimate gives it an AEP of 113.5 which is about right for where it drops.

I understand the hit rating being low value (and I'm not hurting for HR at all), but if it's making up 2% of my damage, rounded up, simple math would say that this is at least a 2% increase in my damage output. I'm wondering how that compares to an item with an AEP of, say, 107 or 118.

Part of this is my ignorance, but I wouldn't think that 83 AEP (the difference between what the proc'd ability would have to get me vs. using the Abacus) would mean a 2% increase in my damage. Am I wrong? I could be, just asking.

Uh oh. Well that explains why I couldn't figure out how you had valued one of the haste trinkets. Can you check the first post real quick and make sure I didn't make any other slip ups?

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They all look good.

Pure speculation on the Ashtongue talisman.
Behind the scenes stormstrike is likely implemented as the 2 swings and then any successful hit attempts to apply the stormstrike debuff.

If each of these affects is granted a 50% chance to apply the effect then you get...
- 5% of stormstrikes get dodged and result in nothing.
- 95% both swings hit, both swings apply stormstrike (does not stack.) This results in 4 coinflips to apply the buff.

4 coin flips = 15/16 = 93.75%
93.75% * 0.95(non dodges) = 89% proc rate which is our observed rate.


I am still 3 weeks out from the trinket but a simple way to test if this is what is happening is to have someone who has the trinket put on a 2 hander (or staff if they have no 2H talents) and go test the proc rate. If it works the way I am guessing a 2 hander should see a proc rate around 71%.

Our class is so weird.

More evidence that the itemization team is not working very closely with the mechanics team?

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First off thanks for gathering all this up into one thread, it has helped me alot in dicideing what to do. I do however have a few questions.
First off, whats up with flurry?, I see alot of math here use flurry as 30%, but in game, while duelwielding, it is more around 23%. Is this some kind of tooltip bug I missed or am I just missing something?
In that regard that brings me to my current problem, after a long time of thinking it out I have dicided to choose the Drakefist over the Planar Edge. I can't seem to choose an offhand though, I ruled out the blue weapons as they are all faster then the drakefist but have less dps then the two crafted weapons, and the arena weapon should be an option next season but not this one. So that leaves me with the two crafted weapons. From a stat point I like the stats of the Fel Edged Axe better, I saw a post a while back that showed 2.7/2.2 and 2.7/2.4 have the same chance to steal wf's so the advantege of the Runic Hammer is it's 8.5~ more dmg to wf's and ss, I then ran into another peice of info, I hear the drakefist procs alot, and adding it's proc with flurry the runic hammer goes to 1.43speed, with mongoose it's still at 1.414 but a 2nd proc puts it at 1.38, compairing it to the fel edged which goes to 1.32 is this loss enough of a difference to make up for the 8.5~dmg loss to ss and wf's?, Also I seem to see don't use under speed 2.4 alot, is there a specific reason for that vaule or is it just a general good vaule to tell people to stay slow/slow?

Thanks for the help on Romulo's Poison. That is more what I was expecting. I'm going to try to test out Abacus versus it (IF THE ABACUS WOULD EVER FREAKING DROP!!!!) and I'll let you know what it shows.

I have a few more questions I'm hoping someone can answer:

- If I were to get Decapitator, would it increase my dps to use that and put my MG Cleaver in my OH, or should I stick to using MG Cleaver in my MH and use this green lvl 70 fist weapon in my OH (it's 2.6 speed, of course)?

- Tornhoof's calculations (50 crit vs. 100 AP vs. 50 hit rating) use a base of 25% crit chance, 2200 AP, and 22% hit chance. WHO HAS THESE STATS??? First off, I'm not sure how an enhancement shaman gets to 2200 AP, and secondly, it seems against your point right after that:
My question is, has there been any work done to see what a more equal distribution of stats would give for the benefit of each incremental point? Though I would have a hard time believing that AP could be UNDER-valued in that model, I would be very curious to see if these weightings were constant for every level of gearing.

- Ring Enchants: +2 weapon damage or +4 to all stats? The mats for +4 to all stats are INSANE for how small the buff is, and I'm not sure +2 weapon damage, with flurry, SS, and WF wouldn't add up to more over time. Any thoughts? With slow weapons preferred for Shaman, I would think that would especially de-value this enchant.

- What reliable tools can I use to judge my dps? How do you test it? I'm trying to test it using recount and SWS, but they give VASTLY different results, and they're not always different in the same direction (sometimes recount is higher, sometimes it's lower), so it's hard to judge which is right.

Thanks for the help, sorry for all the questions.

Flurry is a 30% attack speed increase, but the way attack speed increases work are like this: Weapon speed = Weapon Speed * 1/(100% + 30%). That's the same thing as multiplying by 0.769, which is why you're observing a 23.1% decrease in weapon speed.
Why would you rule out the blue offhands just for having less DPS? The first post of this thread goes into a lot of detail explaining that slow offhands are necessary, regardless of DPS. Anyway, your only realistic option besides blues is the Runic Hammer (again check main post). That said, there's absolutely no reason the arena weapon shouldn't be an option this season. At 300 points a week (easily attained by a mediocre 2v2 team or a horrible 5v5 team) you'll end up with the Cleaver or Pummeler in 9 weeks.

Disquette et al - is it possible to modify these simulations to model the 2 stormstrike methods? (hit when lit vs save till after WF CD)

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[18:56] <Yabden> i dont want to live in a world where goa is better

Edit: Removed some unsupportable data.

Long story short though you do gain dps by waiting for the cooldown to fade.

Which sim used is irrelvant I am sure they all have code like this

If (ssCD < ssDelay) // ssDelay usually 10.0, ssCD is time since last ss.
{
//reset ssCD
//do the swings.
}

turn this into
if (ssCD < ssDelay)
{
if (bWfCd == false) // add this line with whatever var they are using to track the wfcd.
{
//reset cd
// do the swings
}
}

and rerun the sims. Then everyone can use whatever sim they prefer. I think they would all show a greater than 1% gain just by waiting for the cooldown to expire every time.

I've lost a bit of steam... the problem with flurry makes me think that it's a pointless exercise. Until I have a good model for that, I'm pretty much disgusted with the whole thing.

I only like models where I can test game against reality and say "look, they match!"

edit - Berg - if you have a whole armory, including talents, how well does your sim match actual dps tests? If you know something I don't, I'm all ears.

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----- sig ---------------
Discoepfeand - rogue
Disquette - shaman

I'm looking for a few opinions here. There has been an argument between a few members in my guild over twisting GoA and WF totems or keeping WF down in melee heavy groups. One side says the DPS gained from buffing the party by twisting overweighs the gains of a full shock rotation and holding SS for the WF cooldown, the other side says the opposite is more total DPS. I'm leaning more towards a full shock rotation & waiting for the WF cooldown. Anyone dug deep into this?

I tried this out using some of the macros people had posted last week. I wasn't even in combat, just sitting in Shattrath dropping totems. I gave it about 5 minutes of use before I concluded that:
- it requires a lot of concentration on a button in your UI instead of whats going on the game world, which is probably a lot more important
- it used a hell of a lot of mana which means no emergency healing
- watching the WF buff on my weapon I noticed that unless you drop the WF totem earlier than the 9 seconds it lasts on the weapon that you ran the risk of the buff running off someone and missing an opportunity for a proc while you were refreshing the totem. If you're late on the drop, or have a decent amount of latency, you could have this happen quite frequently.

I didn't give it a lot of testing time, and didn't even try it in combat, but to me it personally felt incredibly clunky and took my attention away from anything other than the macro. Not something I'll be doing in a raid.

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[18:56] <Yabden> i dont want to live in a world where goa is better

It is entirely possible to have 100% WF uptime and ~90% GoA uptime if your macro is bound with stormstrike (cast sequence SS - WF - GoA, spammed heavily). Use WF rank 1 if you can't sustain a higher rank, the benefit of simultaneous GoA is greater than the increase in AP on only WF procs, especially for yourself and if you have a feral druid DPSing in your group (with 34.44% unbuffed crit, 55+% crit is attainable for me with double goose, LoTP, and GoA).

If you check my armory, note that I have a Shattrath flask on but it is not affecting my stats (I'm logged outside of Hyjal/BT/TK/SSC).

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Male Enhancement.

So do people actually try this in raids? I can't imagine trying to do totem twisting on any encounters that require decent mobility and interrupting from shocks. If anyone has had success with it, I'd like to know.

I've been totem cycling during raids, it's quite simple with castsequence macro (/castsequence reset=10, Stormstrike, Windfury Totem, Grace of Air Totem). Sustaining shocks is nearly impossible unless you get JoW on your target. You can do a shock once per "rotation" of totems until you've used your first rage, then you have to stick to stormstrike and totems almost exclusively, the 2 minutes feels like an eternity when you're dropping mana that fast. I would definitely say it's worth it to totem cycle, it's a definite dps loss (~6% if you count the GoA you are gaining) but the additional agility for your group outweighs your small margin of dps loss.

It is only really effective in situations where the following parameters are met:

1. You aren't moving, and if you are, it isn't very far.
2. You have extremely high DPS rogues in your group.
3. You need to burn something down.
4. The fight doesn't punish you for having low mana.

I run the SS-WF-GoA macro on Teron Gorefiend where, unless I get ghosted, my job is to stand there and DPS. WWS for Teron in which no DPS classes had to kill constructs.

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Male Enhancement.

Glad to read this because i was planning to make Drakefist MH and S2(2.6) axe OH. It is very hard to think of putting the higher DPS weapon in my OH vs the T2 drakemaw hammer in your MH. Shaman are in the same position hunters were before and somewhat still slower is just always better.

Although it took a bit getting used to, totemweaving has become second nature to me. I totemweave WF & GoA all the time now even in 5 mans. I have the macro set up independent of my SS however and I like it that way. I've also found weaving WF & TA helpful when beginning a fight or to help lower the TPS of my group if they're getting too high.

Although I have a general idea of when I need to recycle the totems, I'm going to try and set up a custom timer using the Ace2 mod Quartz. I already use it as a castbar and GCD timer.

Depending on the fight, I'm also finding that I need to be more conservative with my shocks but most of the time, a SR + mana pot is enough to keep me going. Talents to reduce mana cost on totems is a must (Mental quickness & Totemic Focus). My biggest concern right now is sometimes the totem cycling coincides exactly with my SS CD and GCD screws me into either delaying my SS or delaying the totem cycle. I wish totems were on a seperate GCD or had no GCD at all.

I hope blizzard doesn't catch wind of this and nerf it. They put WF and GoA on the same totem for a reason.

I was going to post this exact sentiment earlier but figured I'd be accused of beating a dead horse. They really cannot have intended people to do this type of totem stacking given how the totem elements work.

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[18:56] <Yabden> i dont want to live in a world where goa is better

Well, it's a possible mechanics bug that works in the favor of the player, so we can expect a fix sooner rather than later probably.

I have been toying around with using the Totem Twisting method for my 2 rogue, 1 arms, feral druid group, and they love it. Malan, in order to not have WF expire change the text in the Macro that was posted here to "reset=8" instead of the default 9 that was originally listed in the post.

I did the same trials in Shat that you mentioned and that was an issue that I noticed as well. It really does not take as much concentration to Twist as you think. You get into a mindset after about a week and it becomes natural about knowing when you click the Twisting Macro twice to relay the totems.

I ussually run with 8.7k Mana buffed, and in order to sustain this the order I use is WF->GoA -> SS -> FS. By using Flame Shock it lowers the mana requirement cause it is only required every 12 seconds. If I get down to 1/4 mana and have no UR or Pot timer up, I just resort to the totem twist and SS until one timer comes up. If you can convince your paladins to keep JoW up on the Mob, mana will almost never be an issue.

I was using a SS->WF->GoA cycle and that was just not working for me since it was dependent on getting that SS off before the rest of the cycle. I think I'll try switching to a WF->GoA->SS cycle, or WF->SS->GoA. Overall tho, I hate doing it. I find it hard to focus on what's going on around me when I'm stressing over making sure the totems go down when they have to. I'm mostly hoping it gets "fixed" so I don't feel guilty for not doing it.

Where would I go about finding the simulator to check what items optimize my dps?

The first post of this very thread.

Im curious as to peoples thoughts on the effect of using a higher dps, fast weapon with another weapon buff in the offhand.

At some point, Slow/Fast(Purple) WF/FT has to be better than Slow/Slow(green) WF/WF.

I know the OP says to move to an AH green rather than an epic dagger, but I find it hard to believe that the dps difference cant be made up by sheer DPS on the offhand with Flametongue helping as well. Not to mention the MH will now be unencumbered by off hand WFs...

I think we are starting to get to the point of going in endless circles with this post. There are only so many times that someone can do the math on fast offhands with our horrible imbues like FT and rockbiter- It's already been tested in the numerous other threads that gave birth to this one, and the answer is still WF/WF with slow weapons.

I think people who say "I use Flametongue because my dagger is fast!" don't really understand how Flametongue works.

Thank you all for a sane discussion and an excellent collection of valuable enhancement shaman information.

After reading 30 pages, I have noticed that there is no mention of down shifting. Twisting is mentioned (TA & WF), but I think down shifting is also a useful tactic instead of dying to wipe aggro.

Down shifting - Changing weapons/items in the main hand, off hand, or both so as to achieve a reduction in aggro, but not lose the benefits of buffs from talent and item procs.

An example is to equip [Blackout Truncheon] in your off hand to dramatically decrease your DPS while still keeping UR and totems down for the group. Not only does it seem like a more realistic solution than suicide-ankh, it maintains the synergy of the raid and allows you to shed hate. Granted, it is at the cost of personal DPS, but you can just as easily up shift back to the slow offhand when your aggro cools off.

I realize this is a tactic and not a further exploration or clarification of mechanics or itemization, but it is a tactic only possible by the existence of many of the mechanics that you have theorized and tested.

I downloaded Pater's java sim, and changed the lines that fired off SS to the following:

Then I made a SPAM_SS constant, which can be true or false. If it's true, it SS's whenever it's lit. If it's false, it waits until WF is off cooldown.

I used the standard stats that come with the Java sim, and the standard equipment (gladiator OH, Decapitator MH). All I changed was the SS latency to 10.5 for a little more realism.

I ran a few sims, and my results were:

Spamming SS whenever it's lit: Avg DPS = 772
Waiting on SS until WF is off cooldown: Avg DPS = 791

So, according to Pater's sim (which, by the way, is pretty sweet), waiting for WF to be up before firing SS seems to be a decent DPS increase. Would be interesting to see if this is true in real life as well.

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The world can't end today because it's tomorrow in Australia

There is probably only 1 fight that I can think of where I'd actually need to do this - void reaver. In other cases, our tank has enough TPS where I will never catch up to him. And on void reaver, its a 100% agro wipe to battle anhk so you can continue to go full steam on it.

If you need to drop aggro and "shaman vanish" isn't a reasonable option, you're much better off to stop shocking than to reduce your melee DPS, due to the 15% threat reduction from Spirit Weapons. Ankhing up is quite reasonable on Void Reaver which is really the only fight where this is a severe problem. (Hydross is very aggro-sensitive too, but that's because of the constant drops... I don't see weapon swapping as effective there.)

On what are you basing this? waiting for up to 2.9 seconds in bettween each stormstrike _CANNOT_ possibly be better, without doing the nunbers each second you have to wait is 10% longer time in between your SS, over a long fight that is massive.

The problem I find with Battle Anhking is that you lose all your buffs which for me is like 800 AP which pretty much gimps my dps hardcore for the rest of the fight. Downgrading looks great, never thought of it.

Out of curiosity, does anyone happen to know if dodge/miss/parry/crit/hit/block/glance are all calculated at the same time, or are they all independent of each other?

Back to the totem twisting, I use this macro:-Question mark icon helps a lot, the icon of the macro will be replaced to the spell what's next
-reset=8 helps to put down windfury in time (before the effect goes off from the weapons) but it works only if you don't spam the macro. It resets only after 8 seconds of the last push.
-If I can't use stormstrike in time I press "alt" and the hotkey of the macro so I skip a stormstrike and jump to the first spell: Windfury Totem

This works quite well for me, I've been using this for like two weeks. My melee group is very happy and it is an upgrade to my party's dps, though my dps goes lower. Of course I can't use totem wtisting on every fight, but there are quite a lot where it's a big boost.
Malan: if you keep spamming this macro and you can cast stormstrike every time it has cooled down the wf effect will be always up on the weapons of your group, I tested it and it's working fine.

I have been looking at the Lootzor links that people have come up with for enhancement shaman, and many of them seem to be wrong to me. Shouldn’t strength be half the value of attack power? Shouldn’t agility be .884 compared to 1.0 crit rating(25agi=22.1cr)?

A.
1.0(CR) 0.7(HiR) 0.5(AP)
So would that mean also that> .25(STR), 0.884(AGI) ?

B.
1 CR = 1 STR = 2 AP = 1.43 HR = 0.9 HasteRating
1.0(CR) 1.0(STR) 2.0(AP) 1.43(HiR) .9(HaR)
So would that mean also that> 0.884*(AGI) ?

So putting these on top of each other to make them easier to compare>
A. 1.0(CR) 0.884(AGI) .25(STR) 0.5(AP) 0.7(HiR) ??(HaR)
B. 1.0(CR) 0.884(AGI) 1.0(STR) 2.0(AP) 1.43(HiR) .9(HaR)

So which is right, A or B?

I could be completely wrong about all of this, but if I am right then could we please update the first page? Lootzor doesn’t allow me to enter haste rating, is there something else I could use to find gear based on the above values?

Thanks in advance!

1 Strength is 2 AP without buffs, so for points considered, Strength will be considered double as valuable as AP. It makes absolutely no sense for strength to be half value for AP. I think you might have been thinking in reverse in terms of math.

Just offhand, STR can be modified by Kings, AP can't. If you haven't included that, I'm sure there are 100 other variables that are also left out of these formulae.

Pretty much, after modified by kings, you only need 22 effective agility (24.2 after) to almost reach 25 actual agility. As a result, its easier to view 1 agi as 1 crit rating. If you want to be really precise, its slightly worse

No I hadn't thought about kings, and yes I got my str/ap backwards. Thank you

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The answer is: Attacktable, that means for non special attacks they are all dependent.

Attack table - WoWWiki, the Warcraft wiki

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http://code.google.com/p/wowequipoptimizer/

First time posting heh. Our first VR kill last night, first night of us wholeheartedly attempting him, seemed people had issues dodging giant balls of electricity our actual first night :P

With the tank threat on that fight, I swapped to rockbiter just to see if it made a difference. While I had windfury up, I hit the threat cap very rapidly and jsut stood there. Rockbiter seemed to work better because not only could I control my threat generation to a much finer degree, but I was able to just keep swinging if for nothing else than the Light heals.

Horrible threat cap on that fight, but that is how I crept around it. I believe i swapped my offhand to windfury midfight to get more light procs, but eventually threat was too much, and had to battle ankh just to stay alive (ironic huh), swapped windfury on both weapons, and went balls out till he died without pulling agro.

Seemed that maximizing my damage only maximized my threat. Figured I'd throw in my two cents

On VR I hold back shocks and Shamanistic Rage for the first 30 to 60 seconds, then go all-out; last time I popped heroism at like 20%, pulled aggro at 10%, died, ankhed up and finished it off. Besides 1 prot warrior we used 2 ferals, which helps IMO, they have better threat gen when they don't have aggro since they do more white damage. Parse if anyone cares.

First of all I must say reading this thread has been very interesting... all the discussion of weaponspeed now lead to this question:

My weapons at the time are Black Planar Edge (2.7 attackspeed)in the MH and the Season2 Arena weapon (2.6) in the OH. Today I got myself the Mace "Fool´s bane" (2.6) from Illhoof and now I am wondering if the 4 dps deficit to my Black Planar Edge is compensated by the 2.6 attackspeed which better matches my OH so my MH WF proccs are not eaten by my OH. Or is the little slower attackspeed of my MH of no importance and I have leveled blacksmithing for a reason?

Please let me know what you think...

Wouldn't it make much more sense to either:

a) sub in some arcane resist gear,
b) periodically drop a few heals (terokk's gavel!),
c) twist WF/Tranq Air

and continue to use optimal weapon imbues?

This way you add some extra value while keeping your dps at its maximum.

On VR I:
1) Pull aggro
2) Put on my shield
3) Dodge, dodge (double Mongoose)
4) Eat the knockback for a free deaggro!

I've managed to do that with Gruul, but not Void Reaver, yet. Just stopped attacking on Gruul when I reached 2nd aggro, dodged 4 hateful strikes before the next warrior in line caught up. Void Reaver I usually just "vanish" and keep going after. Our Paladins are pretty good about rebuffs, especially Salvation on myself and our Elemental shaman.

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~ Aeo - Level 70 Draenei Shaman ~
~ Guild: Reclaimed / Realm: Skywall ~

Why would you want salvation after battle rezzing? Best thing to give you at that point is Might and Wisdom so you can catch up in DPS a bit.

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[18:56] <Yabden> i dont want to live in a world where goa is better

See Dakashi's post - a modified version of Pater's sim shows more damage by waiting for the WF cooldown.

This is one of those problems that can't be properly simulated though, because sims don't screw up. They react much faster than human players do. Actually gaining DPS by this method would probably take some practice. If you delay hitting WF waiting for the cooldown, and then a white hit procs WF and puts you back on cooldown before you can get the stormstrike in, you're going to do less DPS than you would have if you'd just hit SS as soon as it was up.

I've been playing around with using a WF monitor and delaying stormstrike, and I like it so far, but individual results may vary.

Has anyone else tried out the Cystalforged Trinket from the Ogri'la Rep?

I think its a good trinket, but after reading all of this for the first time, Im really not sure how it stacks up to the other trinkets listed which I dont really have access to before the other melee classes in my raids

Im definately a sucker for a fast offhand as well...gotta change that asap.

Crystalforged Trinket - 1min CD.

The rule I generally go by is if I think there is more than 1.5 seconds left I just go ahead and SS, otherwise I wait. I've gotten pretty good at guessing the lag on the windfury timer. As long as the little ball that I go by turns red as I SS, I'm happy

I think there is a line between the loss of SS dps caused by waiting and the increased DPS from more windfury procs due to guaranteeing that the SS has a chance to proc windfury. 1.5 seconds seems like a good compromise.

Hello, I've been reading here in these Forums for some days now. That's because I'm a Resto-specced Shaman and i want to try out Enhancement, and here is so much information about it.
Now my questions regarding hit and miss:

I got many different views about it, some say 100 hit rating is enough, some would swear going to the cap of 261 is best.(I'm not sure if its really the cap, this is what i've been reading here most). So could you clarify what hit percentage is now really the cap and if it's worth to reach it?

an example one many i can't explain to myself:
It's from WWS, an i always see high miss percentages, i'm wondered about
WWS link
looking into his armory(Link), he got around 10% hit from gear and 9%from talents

so he should miss aroung 5-6% on white hits, depending on how much you need to reach the cap. on yellow he should miss at all from what i've heard.
but if you look at WWS his white hits miss around 17% and wf at 8,7% and SS 1,8%.
How do you explain that? Does void reaver dodging counts as "miss" there?
Please explain me this. Note that this high miss percentages appear on almost every enhancement shaman i see on WWS.
and sorry for the bad english.

Anything that isn't a hit, crit, or glance, is considered a "Miss" for the total miss category. If you expand the melee attacks you can see a breakdown of the actual misses, dodges, and parries.

I've recently dropped about 90 hit rating and haven't looked back. Sadly some bad gearing choices were made before I tried this out.

For quite a while now we have worked with the concept that 'small haste effects which take weapon speed from just above 1.5 to just below it will decrease dps'. This is due to interaction with the WF cd timer, and was shown via sims, but I have not seen any ingame tests done to see the actual effects.

So, out I went to do a bit of testing on blasted lands mobs. I used 2 'Sergeant's Warhammer of ***' (2.1 speed, and level 12 greens, hence low dps numbers) as the weapons and first used 104 haste rating, the second set was done with 73 haste rating. The 104 haste rating set had a ring and trinket slot empty, the 73 had some green items in them to make sure no AP was lost when the Band of Devastion was removed. I also did not use my helm, as it has a haste proc meta gem. Total change in stats between the 2 sets - first set has 31 more haste rating than second, all other stats equal.

First set, 42 minutes 8 seconds (2528 seconds), damage done: 1000054 of which 59.5% white, 40.5% WF. Speed with flurry = 1.47.
Total dps: 396 of which white dps: 235, wf: 160

Second set, 43 minutes 17 seconds (2597 seconds), damage done: 1000194 of which 59.3% white, 40.7% WF. Speed with flurry = 1.51.
Total dps: 385 of which white dps: 228, wf: 157

Now clearly, as we all know, just dealing 2 million total damage is not enough to really conclude anything with the extreme randomness of shaman dps, however this does seem to show one thing, even when crossing the '1.5 speed barrier' with a small gain in haste rating we still see a gain in dps. WF dps was close enough to call as no change, clearly not the drastic loss the sims had lead us to believe, and if there is a loss it would then need a less than 31 haste rating change, basically a value so small as to be of no consequence (smallest single haste gain I could find was 26 rating).

The white damage however is clearly boosted by the presence of the haste, a 3.07% gain in white dps from 2.95% of haste looks to be a correct value. Total dps went up by 2.86% when going from 1.51 speed (flurried) to 1.47 speed (flurried). It would be nice to see some more data collected, but from this atleast it seems there is no point at which haste is bad at all, and it is infact a very strong stat for us no matter what our current flurried weapon speed is.

Heya Khlysti, thanks for the great testing!

I personally think that lag has something to do with weapon hit times, so it might be a slightly better test to have something like 1.4 flurried speed versus 1.65 flurried speed.

In any case, those results are very interesting - thank you for them.

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----- sig ---------------
Discoepfeand - rogue
Disquette - shaman

Hello everyone =)

I was wondering if there was any reason I should get the [Merciless Gladiator's Cleaver] over the [Merciless Gladiator's Pummeler] for my new OH.

I only ask because the axe gets mentioned alot, and the mace does not - someone please enlighten me if there is actually a reason that the axe is better?

Also I would appreciate it if someone could have a look at my armoury page and see if I'm doing anything wrong? Personally i'm pretty happy currently - Bare in mind we're about to kill Gruul, So thats about the the level of loot I have access to. Planning on swapping out +Hit trinket with the Bloodlust Broach soon, and also the Hourglass trinket with the Dragonspine Trophy when nubcakes drops it.
Currently also grinding heroic mana tombs for the uber totem.

Thank you all in advance!

http://armory.wow-europe.com/charact...aenor&n=Roonie Here's me!! please don't be too mean!! ~Hides~

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